Meteorological data collected by weather balloons halted. Statistics for HIV among transgender people were scrubbed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. And basic public figures, like how many people work for the federal government, have been frozen or delayed for months.
Across the federal government, Trump has been wielding his influence over data used by researchers, economists and scientists, an effort that was playing out largely behind the scenes until Friday, when he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The agency collects and publishes economic data, and Trump accused its former chief, Erika McEntarfer, of giving fake employment data last week showing a recent slowdown in the labor market. Presidents of both political parties often seek to spin government data to their benefit,
cherry-picking numbers that put their agendas in the best light possible. But McEntarfer’s firing has drawn criticism from economists, Wall Street investors and even Republicans who are raising wider concerns about the continued reliability of government data once seen as the gold standard.
“We 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’t be politicized,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said.
“You can’t really make the numbers different or better by firing the people doing the counting.” William Beach, whom Trump nominated for BLS commissioner said the commissioner has no control over the results of the jobs report, which is compiled by a group of economists and statisticians.
The commissioner doesn't see the data until it is locked into the system several days before its release, Beach said.
"It's not currently possible for the commissioner to rig the data," he said.
Trump has a history of seeking to distort hard numbers. In 2019, during his first term, he showed off a doctored hurricane model that included a Sharpie-like black swipe that made Alabama seem to be in Hurricane Dorian’s path — when it wasn’t. www.nbcnews.com/politics/don... So stupid.
The Sharpie is mightier: Trump...
As the Covid-19 pandemic raged, Trump bemoaned how testing made the U.S. look as though it had more cases than other countries.
“Think of this: If we didn’t do testing, instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we would have half the cases,” he said at news conference.
Betty C. Jung