'Strikes fear into my heart': Economist sounds dire alarm over Trump's new nominee

An economist issued a dire warning on Tuesday about a loyalist that President Donald Trump has picked to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Trump recently announced that he was considering hiring E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation, to lead the embattled BLS. Trump fired former Bureau Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after she released a revised jobs report showing there was almost no job growth during Trump's first quarter as president.

Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, described Antoni as "manifestly unqualified for the job" during an interview on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper."

"This is a fella that is in way over his head," Wolfer told Tapper. "He's manifestly unqualified for the job, and in fact, probably wouldn't be able to get a job as a junior staffer at the [BLS]."

"He has exactly one qualification, which is that he's a Trump loyalist," Wolfers continued. "The problem with that is that's going to lead you to do all sorts of things to hide data that are inconvenient."

Antoni told Fox Business on Tuesday that he planned to overhaul the BLS's data publishing schedule. The agency currently publishes data on a rolling 30-day schedule. Antoni proposed publishing data quarterly, which some experts have said is a bad idea.

"One thing we need in a BLS commissioner is a commitment to truth," Wolfers said. "This guy's got no commitment to it, and even contemplating the idea that we would stop publishing jobs numbers when the economy might be on the cusp of a recession, that's the sort of thing that strikes fear into my heart."

Watch the entire segment below or by clicking here.