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Trump and his cronies insist Trump’s firing of the BLS commissioner over disappointing jobs data was justified<\/span>Mehmet Eser\/ZUMA<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The shock and<\/span> outrage over President Donald Trump firing<\/a> the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner because of weak jobs numbers seems increasingly bipartisan.<\/p>\n Several Republican senators told NBC News<\/a> that they did not support Trump\u2019s firing of Erika McEntarfer if it was, in fact, motivated by his displeasure over the poor jobs numbers released on Friday. (All indications are that it was<\/a>.) Democrats, meanwhile, said<\/a> Trump\u2019s latest move was the behavior of an authoritarian<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Friday, Trump quickly claimed<\/a> without any evidence that the revised jobs numbers, which showed weaker job growth in May and June than previously projected, had been \u201cmanipulated.\u201d But experts on the work of the BLS, which is part of the Department of Labor, pushed back, saying Trump\u2019s claim is not plausible. <\/p>\n Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who served in the Clinton administration, said<\/a> on ABC\u2019s This Week<\/em> that Trump\u2019s firing \u201cis way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did.\u201d Summers explained: \u201cThese numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals. There\u2019s no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number.\u201d<\/p>\n On CNN\u2019s State of the Union<\/em>, former BLS Commissioner William Beach, who was appointed<\/a> by Trump in 2019, said<\/a> \u201cthere\u2019s no way\u201d the jobs numbers were \u201crigged\u201d as Trump put it. \u201cThe commissioner doesn\u2019t do anything to collect the numbers,\u201d he said. \u201cBy the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they\u2019re all prepared. They\u2019re locked into the computer system.\u201d Beach added that the firing \u201creally hurts the statistical system\u201d and \u201cundermines credibility in BLS.\u201d In a post on X, Beach called<\/a> the firing \u201ctotally groundless\u201d and said it \u201csets a dangerous precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n