CNN's Phillip calls out former Trump official for 'nonsensical' White House firing defense

Former White House official under President Donald Trump Jim Schultz was scolded Saturday on CNN for defending the president’s firing Friday of Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following a jobs report that showed a significant slowdown in job growth.

“Do you feel liberated yet?” asked CNN host Abby Phillip on the network’s “Table for Five.”

“This firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is, I think, one of the more stunning things that Trump has done, not because people in Washington will be stunned, but because of the ripple effects it will have for the people who rely on it around the globe and on Wall Street.”

Among Phillip’s guests was Schultz, who immediately went to bat for Trump. He defended the president’s decision to fire McEntarfer as being “well within his purview,” and justified her termination due to the BLS’ revision of job numbers from May and June.

“Look, they had to make adjustments to the job numbers for the prior months, so when you look at it over time, it's within his purview to do it,” Schultz said. “If he doesn't have confidence in the person, he has a right to fire them.”

Phillip fired back at Schultz almost immediately.

“So in other words, if he doesn't like the results that the person is producing, he can fire them?” Phillip said.

“But remember, there was an adjustment in the results, the results weren't right!” Schultz fired back.

Revisions in job reports, Phillip noted, were frequent from the BLS, who went on to call Schultz’ argument as “nonsensical.”

“Revisions happen; they happen under every president, they happened when (Trump) was president the first time, they happened under Biden, so the idea that revisions are inherently a problem is nonsensical,” Phillip said.

In an apparent effort to downplay the severity of McEntarfer’s firing, a termination that another guest on the panel, Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House communications director for Trump, admitted “raises concerns,” Schultz argued that the controversy would be short-lived.

“The argument that this is going to have some tremendous ripple effect on the economy long term, it's really not, we're not going to be talking about this a week from now,” Schultz said.

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