Maddow blog-Jan. 6 revelations about Trump's labor statistics nominee create new test for GOP senators
E.J. Antoni’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics was already dreadful. New reporting on his Jan. 6 connection makes it vastly worse.
The Jan. 6 revelations surrounding E.J. Antoni have made his BLS nomination look cartoonishly awful.
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-08-14T13:43:53.207Z
In a healthy environment, the WH would pull the plug on this fiasco. In our environment, Senate Republicans will be ordered to confirm him anyway. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/jan-6-revelations-trumps-labor-statistics-nominee-create-new-test-gop-rcna224959
But there’s no need to stop there. Antoni has a record of misunderstanding the same government data that he’s supposed to oversee. He’s signaled an interest in moving away from releasing monthly job reports. He’s derided Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” He helped craft the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint. He’s been mocked by his contemporaries as “a joke.”
And just when it seemed Antoni’s record couldn’t get much worse, NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics was among the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the White House saying he was a ‘bystander’ who wandered over after seeing coverage on the news. ... [Antoni] appears in numerous videos posted on social media of the crowd on the Capitol grounds.
.....But there was a Jan. 6 mob, and the BLS nominee was clearly part of the crowd.
(NBC News) - President Donald Trump's pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics was among the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the White House saying he was a "bystander" who wandered over after seeing coverage on the news.
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T00:15:56.889Z
@ryanjreilly.com
www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...
......This might seem unrealistic, especially given GOP senators’ recent propensity for rubber-stamping other wildly unqualified nominees sent over by the White House. But Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who’ll retire from Capitol Hill next year, has suggested that Jan. 6 is a deal-breaker for him.
If Tillis sticks to that position — and Republican senators such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski give this nomination a serious look — Antoni’s confirmation might not be a foregone conclusion. Watch this space.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Maybe THIS is the one they’ll finally pass! Maybe THIS time they’ll finally stand up for democracy! Maybe THIS time Lucy will finally let Charlie Brown kick that football!
The White House said E.J. Antoni was in town for meetings unrelated to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee was a 'bystander' outside Capitol on Jan. 6, White House says
— Lauren Ashley Davis (@laurenmeidasa.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T01:23:12.324Z
The White House said E.J. Antoni was in town for meetings unrelated to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...
E.J. Antoni, an economist from the Heritage Foundation nominated by Trump this week, after the president fired the previous BLS head, appears in numerous videos posted on social media of the crowd on the Capitol grounds.
The footage shows Antoni approximately an hour after the mob removed police barricades. The footage appears to show him leaving the grounds as people entered the Capitol and not entering the building.
Antoni is on the west side of the Capitol in one video, archived from the social media website Parler, and appears in surveillance footage posted online by the Republican-led Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight.
Reached by NBC News on Tuesday, Antoni declined to comment. A White House official said Wednesday that Antoni was in Washington on Jan. 6 for in-person meetings with his then-employer at an office blocks away from the Capitol, and that he did not cross any barricades or participate in any demonstrations. The footage does not show Antoni crossing barricades or demonstrating.
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