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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

> And the commissioner was just sacked and the reason given was because she was incompetent

The reason given was she purposefully changed the numbers to make Trump look bad. There was of course no evidence given for that.

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The reason given [0] is that "A lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence by Erika McEntarfer, the former Biden-appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has completely eroded public trust in the government agency charged with disseminating key data used by policymakers and businesses to make consequential decisions. Under McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) consistently published overly optimistic jobs numbers — only for those numbers to be quietly revised later."

Which is certainly a political reason and easy to disagree with. But it is reasonable and factually defensible. Her Bureau has been publishing optimistic estimates.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/08/bls-has-lengthy-...

The reason you state is just not factually true. It is false. A lie. Go watch that bloomberg interview from yesterday where the reporters tell Navarro to his face that they have seen "no evidence" of any of that.

No, that's the rationalizations some white house staffer wrote. The reasons Trump gave on Truth Social was that she purposefully changed the numbers to harm Trump.

Then the staffer has made a pretty good argument and has managed to justify firing her. Stroke of luck for Trump that he made a reasonable and easily defended decision by total accident.

Isn't it amazing, how Trump's staff manage to say words that make it sound like he was right all along! Even though those words rarely have any basis in facts.

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