Trump Nominates Jan. 6 'Bystander' to Produce Better Job Numbers

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

E.J. Antoni has experienced a meteoric rise. President Trump nominated him to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, America’s most prestigious producer of economic data, just five years after he completed his PhD at Northern Illinois University. His C.V. is untroubled by citations attesting to his influence, peer-reviewed publications, or relevant experience for the job.

Antoni holds the title of Chief Economist at the Heritage Foundation, the publisher of Project 2025. He has been a fierce critic of the BLS, as has Trump (at least when the numbers make Trump look bad, though he was happy to cite them when they made Biden look bad).

What explains Antoni’s rise? Slavish loyalty, not merit.

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/trump-nominates-jan-6-bystander-to

Pucker up and kiss his stinky ass. That's how you get a job working for Trump.

[Bluetus]

1. Manipulating the employment numbers is bad enough, but

this will quickly escalate to manipulating the inflation numbers.

THe inflation numbers are already rigged to be artificially low. This is baked into the cake because both parties understand a true reporting of inflation would be devastating for the entitlement benefits that are based on CPI, and all the federal contracts that include inflation protection for the contractors.

So the CPI we report is based on a "market basket" that is heavily weighted towards food items that are essentially price-controlled by the various Dept of Agriculture payments that go to farmers every year. We all see inflation on many goods in the 10-25% range, even before the effect of tariffs.

( I am literally typing this post from a restaurant where I just got my bill for the same thing I get here every time -- a chef salad and iced tea. A year ago, that bill was a few pennies short of $15. The last few times, it was around $18.50, and now it is $21.50. That is over 40% increase in a year, folks, and it is the same story at every restaurant.)

So the bogus market basket nature of the CPI has always been a problem. But we are now in a situation where that market basket should show something like 8% annual inflation (the producer price index just showed about 10%), but Trump's lackeys will falsify even the bogus market basket numbers to claim they are in the 2% range.

And that means anybody on Social Security will be screwed. Anybody working under a CPI-protected contract is screwed. Basically we are all screwed as this tsunami of inflation heads our way.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. 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.

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...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-08-14T13:43:53.207Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/jan-6-revelations-trumps-labor-statistics-nominee-create-new-test-gop-rcna224959

Trump this week nominated E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that used to have a reputation as a prominent think tank. Almost immediately, Antoni was exposed as an almost cartoonishly poor choice. His academic background, for example, leaves little doubt that he’s spectacularly unqualified to lead the bureau.

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.

@ryanjreilly.com
www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T00:15:56.889Z

......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.