{"id":159388,"date":"2025-08-04T03:05:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T03:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/white-house-economic-adviser-kevin-hassett-defends-trumps-firing-of-labor-statistics-head-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T03:05:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T03:05:49","slug":"white-house-economic-adviser-kevin-hassett-defends-trumps-firing-of-labor-statistics-head-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/white-house-economic-adviser-kevin-hassett-defends-trumps-firing-of-labor-statistics-head-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett defends Trump's firing of labor statistics head – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Profile
Sections
Local
tv
Featured
More From NBC
Follow NBC News
news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Sunday defended President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to fire<\/a> the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as the president\u2019s claim that weaker-than-expected jobs reports were \u201crigged,\u201d but failed to produce any evidence to support Trump\u2019s claim.
\u201cWhat we need is a fresh set of eyes over the BLS,\u201d Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, told NBC News\u2019 \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a monthly jobs report<\/a> that included weaker-than-expected numbers for July, plus major downward revisions<\/a> of May and June\u2019s numbers.
In a post on Truth Social on Friday, the president said the jobs numbers were \u201crigged\u201d and that he\u2019d asked his team to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
\u201cWe need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a>.
In another Truth Social post, the president added, \u201cIn my opinion, today\u2019s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.\u201d
On Sunday, Hassett cast similar doubt on the accuracy of the jobs numbers, pointing to past revisions that were made to jobs reports after then-President Joe Biden stopped running for re-election last year.
\u201cThere have been a bunch of patterns that could make people wonder. And I think the most important thing for people to know is that it\u2019s the president\u2019s highest priority that the data be trusted and that people get to the bottom of why these revisions are so unreliable,\u201d Hassett told \u201cMeet the Press\u201d moderator Kristen Welker.
He added later in the interview that the Trump administration\u2019s goal was to understand why there was such a sizable revision to past months\u2019 jobs numbers.
\u201cThe bottom line is that there were people involved in creating these numbers. And if I were running the BLS and I had a number that was a huge, politically important revision, the biggest since 1968 actually … then I would have a really long report explaining exactly what happened. And we didn\u2019t get that,\u201d Hassett said.
It’s not uncommon for jobs reports to be revised in the months following their release, but Hassett emphasized Sunday that July’s revision was one of the largest he’s seen in decades.
Trump faced criticism from Democrats and Republicans in Congress on Friday when he decided to fire McEntarfer, with several Republican senators questioning whether the firing <\/a>would actually help the Trump administration improve future jobs numbers.
\u201cWe have to look somewhere for objective statistics. When the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that, you know, the statistics won\u2019t be politicized,\u201d Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told NBC News on Friday.
\u201cI\u2019m going to look into it, but first impression is that you can\u2019t really make the numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting,\u201d he added.
Hassett said Sunday that installing Trump\u2019s \u201cown people\u201d will help achieve more \u201ctransparent and reliable\u201d jobs reports in the future.
\u201cThe president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they\u2019re more transparent and more reliable. And if there are big changes and big revisions \u2014 we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example \u2014 then we want to know why, we want people to explain it to us,\u201d he said.
Later on Sunday, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., joined “Meet the Press” and accused the president of trying to “weaponize” the Bureau of Labor Statistics for his own agenda.
Padilla also said the Senate would evaluate the “independence” of a new BLS commissioner when it comes time to confirm a new one.
“That’s the big question for members of Congress who will have to confirm, members of the Senate, who have to confirm whoever Trump replaces,” Padilla told Welker. “Confirmation hearings are supposed to be about ‘Is it going to be somebody that will maintain the independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,’ like so many other departments and agencies that need to have the independence from the political pressure of the White House to do their job reliably.”
“When [Trump’s] trying to weaponize the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that tells you a lot about their insecurity about the economy and the state of economic affairs,” Padilla added later.
Hassett also spoke about the president\u2019s evolving tariff agenda.
Last week, Trump formalized trade deals with countries including the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom and imposed sweeping tariffs<\/a> on some of the U.S.\u2019 largest trading partners, like Canada, which now faces a 35% tariff rate on goods not covered by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement.
Hassett on Sunday echoed Trump\u2019s statements to NBC News<\/a> earlier in the week, indicating that there was still room to make trade deals for nations that hadn\u2019t yet concluded negotiations.
\u201cFor the deals that aren\u2019t ready yet, they\u2019re going to get the reciprocal rates soon, and then we would expect that there might continue to be negotiations with those countries,\u201d he told Welker.
Hassett also cast doubt on the idea that higher tariffs on consumer goods could lead to inflation, as economic analysts have been predicting for months.
Instead, Hassett blamed inflation on the Biden administration.
\u201cEvery measure of inflation, if you aggregate it, if you look at the top-line numbers, is lower than it\u2019s been in five months,\u201d he said, adding later: \u201cSo inflation has come down. And inflation has come down for a lot of reasons, but I think the main reason is that we\u2019re no longer printing money and sending it to people like the Bidens did. That\u2019s a recipe for inflation.\u201d
Alexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ProfileSectionsLocaltvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC News news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeWhite House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Sunday defended President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as the president\u2019s claim that weaker-than-expected jobs reports were \u201crigged,\u201d but failed to produce any evidence to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":159389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}