Trump Administration Yanks BLS Pick E.J. Antoni’s Nomination After KFile Exposé
Alex Brandon/AP
The White House has withdrawn President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just weeks after the president forced out its previous commissioner over jobs figures he claimed — without evidence — were “rigged.”
E.J. Antoni, a Heritage Foundation economist, was tapped by Trump in August and hailed in a Truth Social post as a “Highly Respected Economist.”
But his nomination collapsed after CNN’s KFile unearthed a now-deleted Twitter account filled with sexually charged attacks on Kamala Harris and disparaging posts aimed at gay people.
Speaking to CNN, Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said: “If you just look at who we’ve noticed, I think you’ll know whether he’s been pulled or not.”
“Correct,” he added, when the network pressed him on whether Antoni’s nomination had been pulled.
The White House insisted Antoni remained a “brilliant economist and an American patriot” in a statement on Tuesday night and promised Trump would soon name another nominee.
The president’s firing of Erika McEntarfer, the previous commissioner, came after a disappointing July jobs report and sharp revisions to earlier data, which are routine in the BLS’s history but were painted by Trump as evidence of fixing the numbers.
