AUGUST 5, 2025 – Last week Trump’s impulsivity triggered the most emblematic move of his disastrous second administration. If anything—anything[1]—could give his Republican followers a reason to ditch him once and for all, this move would be it. But of course, it won’t be. The party is so far beyond self-redemption, nothing will derail the Kook-Aid train except earth’s run-in with a comet.
I refer here to the president’s summary firing of Erika McEntarfer, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As applies to Trump’s every word and act, what you see and hear is exactly what you get: B.S. Invariably, he saves us the trouble of having to analyze an argument. There never is an argument per se; only a predicate composed of a handful of words from a grade-schooler’s vocabulary list. In the case at hand, it was, “She rigged the numbers.”
“Rigging the numbers.” Trump would know. He’s spent most of his adult life “rigging the numbers,” either to fool his bankers or cheat the government—and us taxpayers—out of tax revenue. And lest we forget, for all too long after his failed bid for re-election in 2020, he and his water-carrying cult followers attempted to “rig” votes in key battleground states under the guise of accusing his opponents of having done so. Consistent with his unswerving pattern, Trump presents absolutely zero evidence that Commissioner McEntarfer or any of the statisticians working at her direction or under her control engaged in such nefarious work. Given Trump’s well-documented history of fraud in numerous contexts, or more bluntly, as master of the Art of the Fraud, he instinctively accuses others of the same methods that he himself is wont to deploy without a scintilla of moral reticence. The only difference is that in his own record of fraud, there’s evidence rising to the level of proof under the Rules of Evidence; in the case of targets of his unfounded accusations, he never provides any facts. To him, it’s all quite simple: facts carry no moral or intellectual currency whatsoever.
What’s so troubling about this latest display of Trump’s complete lack of evidence is that his brazen action, ironically, is itself glaring evidence of the extreme danger in which we now find ourselves.
The sole reason for Trump’s having fired the Commissioner is that he didn’t like the latest employment statistics issued under her watch. What greater self-incriminating evidence could Trump provide that he is of a churlish, petulant, impulsive, reactionary, unthinking, ignorant mind ill-suited for any public or private role involving any degree of responsibility?
I was most stunned by the ramifications of this latest show of impulsivity. In the first place, it serves as a standing death sentence to truth spoken by any Trump adviser. That alone imperils every single one of us who can and will be subject to Trump’s impetuous decision-making. Second, the act of “firing the facts” will have a quick-freeze chilling effect on all people in government responsible for issuing data of any kind. Calling the “second 500-year-flood in three years”[2] anything other than “high water,” for instance, could cost you your job at NOAA.
As much as it has become de rigueur among Republicans to condemn “all things government” (except ICE agents), those same people rely—directly and indirectly—on government-tracked data and statistics. Think storm monitoring, for one; keeping tabs on the spread of diseases for another; farmers making planting decisions and business enterprises making investment decisions for yet another two of many examples. All the foregoing processes depend on government-sourced information, and our lives are directly affected by decision-makers relying on that information. Ironically, the fear of reporting negative numbers of any sort may well undermine confidence in them. The ultimate result will be a profound detrimental effect on our health, safety and prosperity.
If facts have been under siege and attack ever since Trump’s vindictive “birther” initiative against Obama[3], they are now in danger of a wholesale rout from the executive branch of the federal government and by extension, the Republican majority on Capitol Hill. A plane can’t fly without wings; a boat can’t float without buoyancy; a land-based motor vehicle can’t roll without wheels. And a nation of 334 million souls can’t stand without governance based on facts not furies.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Other than masked, unidentified ICE agents rounding up people on U.S. soil and dispatching them to who knows where without any semblance of legal due process guaranteed by the Constitution.
[2] See Houston, for example—2015-2017.
[3] Reportedly attributable to a public joke that President Obama made at Trump’s expense at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.
