President Donald Trump's second term has been mired by scandals from the very beginning. However, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, highlighted on Monday what he considers to be the "most dangerous" among all of the "terrible" actions taken by the president.
Friedman pointed to the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as the most alarming action of Trump 2.0. McEntarfer's tenure ended after she released a jobs report that Trump didn't like.
"Trump, in effect, ordered our trusted and independent government office of economic statistics to become as big a liar as he is," wrote Friedman in a New York Times column.
Friedman called the ouster the most dangerous thing Trump has done — then expressed astonishment at the second "most dangerous" thing to happen.
Senior Trump officials "most responsible for running our economy — people who in their private businesses never would have contemplated firing a subordinate who brought them financial data they did not like — all went along for the ride," he noted.
Friedman scolded those officials for immediately providing cover for the move, rather than calling it out.
"So Trump’s rotten character is now a problem for our whole economy," Friedman railed.
He called out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent by name.
"Shame on each and every one of them — particularly on Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, who knows better and did not step in. What a coward!" he wrote.
He ended with a dire warning for America, concluding that while he's a "congenital optimist, for the first time I believe that if the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone."
"And I don’t know how we will get it back," wrote Friedman.