Larry Summers, the media's favorite former Treasury Secretary, blasted Trump for his authoritarian action in firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, saying his claims against the entire department were preposterous.
Appearing on ABC's This Week, Summers called out many of Trump's fascist actions against universities, media outlets, and many other issues Trump feels threaten his dictatorship goals.
HOST: I guess this firing of the BLS commissioner goes in the category of shocking, but not surprising.
SUMMERS: Yeah, I mean, this is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did.
I'm surprised that other officials have not responded by resigning themselves as took place when Richard Nixon fired people lawlessly.
This is a preposterous charge.
These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals.
There's no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number. The numbers are in line with what we're seeing from all kinds of private sector sources.
This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism.Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms that defend clients that the elected boss finds uncongenial.
This is really scary stuff, and it can hardly be surprising that when the rule of law is a bit in question that there's a big uncertainty premium in the markets that is operating to both make there be less investment, which slows the economy down and also means there's less supply so that there's more inflationary pressure adding to that uncertainty.
Since its inception in 1884, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been one of the most well-respected agencies in this country. It is part of the Department of the Interior.
Trump can't change the actual data, so he's installing as many bootlickers as possible to skew the results and cover up any negativity. This is petty dictator stuff.
