Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) shredded President Donald Trump on MSNBC over his choice of E.J. Antoni, a partisan right-wing economist with a history of attacking nonpartisan data that makes the GOP look bad, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics — a choice made even more controversial when Antoni called for suspending jobs reports altogether.
"I thought Donald Trump was voted into office to handle the economy, almost a single issue," said anchor Alicia Menendez.
"Well, I think that he lied," said Jayapal, a prominent progressive lawmaker. "He lied to people and said that he was going to bring down costs on day one. And the reality is that that is not at all what he's done. His tariffs, his unhinged tariff policy has raised prices for everyday Americans on everything that they need to survive."
"I just had a small business roundtable, and I'm hearing about all of the ways in which these small businesses already operate on narrow margins," Jayapal continued. "And now with the unpredictability, the uncertainty and the crazy tariff policy, they are really struggling. Many are closing. And I think across the board now, Trump's answer to this is lie some more, install somebody at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who is going to give him a jobs report that he likes, not a jobs report that is true."
The situation is so bad, Jayapal said, that even Wall Street executives are "saying, what do we do in this unprecedented situation where Trump has created so much, you know, sort of despair about these government agencies providing factual information that he's now going to install his own and rig the statistics. He tried to rig the election. Now he wants to rig the statistics. And I think that this is a real problem."
"At the end of the day, though ... I think people are still going to see their prices going up," she added. "I mean, you can rig the statistics, but you can't rig the cash at home. It only goes so far. And so, you know — but it's a very serious and dangerous situation for the United States."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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