National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett delivered on Sunday a defense of President Donald Trump over the firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.

On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” moderator Kristen Welker pressed Hassett about “hard evidence” for Trump’s suggestion that McEntarfer, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate, manipulated job numbers for political reasons.

“There was an 818,000 [downward] revision making the Joe Biden job record a lot worse that came out AFTER he withdrew,” says National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on jobs numbers.

“It’s the President’s highest priority that the data be trusted.” pic.twitter.com/6Fhuqe97B8

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 3, 2025

“Well, I mean, the revisions are hard evidence,” Hassett replied. “For example, there was an 818,000 revision making the Joe Biden job record a lot worse that came out after he withdrew from the presidential campaign. There have been a bunch of patterns that could make people wonder. And I think the most important thing for people to know is that it’s the president’s highest priority that the data be trusted and that people get to the bottom of why these revisions are so unreliable.”

Trump announced on Friday that he ordered the firing of McEntarfer after Friday’s jobs report showed that the United States job market underperformed expectations with 73,000 jobs added last month and made significant negative revisions to previous reports. The ouster led some critics to warn the numbers that come from Trump’s administration in the future may not be reliable.

“Studies show that BLS is getting a — doing a better job now than they did 20 years ago, 20 and 30 years ago, in estimating the first number. So, even though it’s revised two more times — that 73,000 will be revised two more times. And that’s — they’re more accurate now than they were 30 years ago. So, I said groundless. I don’t know that there’s any grounds at all for this firing,” William Beach, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and executive director of Fiscal Lab on Capitol Hill, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Beach added, “And it really hurts the statistical system. It undermines credibility in BLS. Suppose that they get a new commissioner, and this person, male or female, are just the best people possible, right? And they do a bad number. Well, everybody’s going to think, well, it’s not as bad as it probably really is, because they’re going to suspect political influence. So this is damaging. This is not what we need to have.”

Hassett made the case in a separate interview on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump did not act in authoritarian fashion, dismissing someone who released legitimate information that he simply did not like.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on jobs numbers: “When the data are unreliable, when they keep being revised all over the place, then there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern in the data.” pic.twitter.com/ORjx0WgLcz

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 3, 2025

“Look, the fact is that when the data are unreliable, when they keep being revised all over the place, then there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern in the data. And so, if you look back to just a year ago, for example, there was another massive revision from the BLS, almost a million jobs, a million jobs down, that said that the Joe Biden jobs record was a lot worse than people thought, but we didn’t get the downward revision until after Joe Biden had dropped out,” Hassett told anchor Shannon Bream.

“And so it, once again, it made people think, what are they doing?” he went on. “I’ve got to tell you … if I were running the BLS, and I don’t aspire to, but if I were running the BLS and I had the biggest downward revision in 50 years, I would have a really, really detailed report explaining why it happened so that everybody really trusted the data. And so we had this move, that move, that move. We had a bunch of people get their responses in late or something like that. But instead, they have this little black box that moves the numbers around and makes people wonder, sometimes with partisan patterns. And so, I think what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS, somebody who can clean this thing up.”

Russiagate was “literally” a coup against President Donald Trump that meets the “criminal elements” of a conspiracy, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller declared on Sunday.

Documents that were declassified by the Trump administration indicate Hillary Clinton may have approved a Russia collusion hoax against Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. In addition, former special Counsel John Durham found the Obama-era FBI appeared to ignore intelligence that indicated Clinton’s campaign, its supporters, or Russian disinformation fueled allegations of ties between Trump’s camp and Moscow in order to distract from her email controversy.

“The Russia collusion hoax against President Trump remains the single greatest hoax and the greatest assault on our democracy in the history of this country,” Miller said during a Fox News interview with “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo. “There’s no comparison, there’s no parallel to anything else. It was a coup. And I’m using that term literally. … It meets the criminal elements of a conspiracy against the government and the criminal elements of a conspiracy to deprive citizens of their civil rights under color of law, one egregious felony after another.”

“The Russia collusion hoax against President Trump remains the single greatest hoax and the greatest assault on our democracy in the history of this country,” says @StephenM.

“It was a coup, and I’m using that term literally … One egregious felony after another.” pic.twitter.com/Y88hXagAYK

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 3, 2025

Former President Barack Obama and top national security veterans from his administration have pushed back on claims of there being a “treasonous conspiracy” associated with the Russia collusion fiasco.

“The special counsel John Durham, who was appointed during Mr. Trump’s first term to investigate how the Russia probe was conducted, similarly found no evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy against Mr. Trump,” Former CIA Director John Brennan and ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “But he affirmed the findings of the special counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a separate investigation into the allegations, which found ample evidence of Russian interference in the election.”

But Miller argued the new information “eliminates any scintilla of doubt about the intention, the premeditation, the planning and orchestration of this conspiracy.” Miller also agreed with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, a former prosecutor and congressman who told Bartiromo last week that he did not believe the statute of limitations would be a hinderance because the alleged conspiracy is ongoing.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has initiated a “strike force” tasked with evaluating the evidence relating the Obama administration’s efforts to drive the Russia collusion allegations in response to various documents that are being disclosed to the public, such as findings that purportedly show officials manufactured and manipulated intelligence regarding Russia to undermine Trump.

Miller, who contended that the country was placed at risk with the “entire security apparatus of this country focusing on the hoax,” said he has “every hope and expectation that the Department of Justice, under the leadership of our courageous attorney general, will follow these facts and follow the evidence and deliver justice.”

He added: “Because, if we have a country where we can continue to have FBI careerists and CIA careerists, deep staters, who will fabricate and doctor evidence, who will create and produce fake material, fabricated material, phony information to try to go after their political enemies, up to and including the president, if we continue to create the impression and the reality that there is not a criminal, a severe criminal penalty for such conduct, it will never stop. It will never desist. It will keep on going forever. And we will continue to have a country that is sabotaged endlessly by the production of fake documents, fake material, fake plots against democratically elected officials. We can’t have that. There must be consequences.”