President Trump recently fired Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her of having “rigged” job reports. In her place, Trump has selected E.J. Antoni, a former Heritage Foundation economist who was photographed at the January 6th debacle (but who claims he was just a “bystander” to the chaos) and who, according to reports from CNN and Wired, formerly ran a Twitter account that posted all sorts of gnarly stuff.
Earlier this month, Wired reported that a since-deleted Twitter account with the same name as Antoni (it went by “Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III”) had posted a flurry of tweets that displayed a “seeming obsession with promoting election denial conspiracy theories while talking about violent threats to those who stood in Trump’s way.” Wired also noted that the account posted “violent religious rhetoric” and, before the Capitol riot, “shared content from The Donald, a virulently pro-Trump message board that was used to organize the events of Jan 6, 2021.” The account is characterized as having been “infused with a deeply hardline Catholic worldview, [and] at times displayed misogyny and a knowledge of Nazi military techniques.”
Surveillance footage has definitively confirmed that Antoni was at the January 6th riots. The White House previously defended Antoni’s presence, claiming he was “a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area.” The White House also previously noted: “EJ was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest EJ engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal.” There’s no evidence Antoni entered the Capitol, and the footage available shows him milling through the crowd and, eventually, leaving the grounds, NBC reports.
CNN now has a new report out about Antoni’s alleged Twitter account that states he posted degrading sexual content about Kamala Harris, apparently implying that her political career was the result of blowjobs:
In 2019, the since-deleted account known as “ErwinJohnAntoni” changed its username to “phdofbombsaway.” The account posted at least five sexually suggestive tweets implying that then Sen. Kamala Harris had advanced her career through sexual favors.
Shortly after Harris ended her 2020 presidential campaign, Antoni wrote, “You can’t run a race on your knees,” in response to a tweet of a doctored campaign poster that depicted a sexually explicit image of Harris.
Antoni also referred to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as “Miss Piggy.” In February 2020, he retweeted a post titled “Advice For Women: How To Land a Great Guy,” which instructed women to “be in shape,” “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.” The post concluded: “Angry feminists and simps will try to sabotage you in the comments. Don’t listen to them. Listen to me.”
Such sweet advice from “ErwinJohn”—jeez any woman would be lucky to have a classy guy like that. The same account reportedly used the handle “Dr. Curtis LeMay,” in apparent reference to the U.S. Air Force’s notoriously psychotic general who oversaw the bombing of Japan in WWII.
When reached for comment, the White House didn’t address the allegations about past social media posts, merely providing the following statement from spokeswoman Taylor Rogers:
“The BLS was failing America’s businesses, policymakers, and families by publishing jobs reports with vastly inaccurate data. This has gone on for years without any real attempt at resolution while Wall Street and Main Street’s frustration with the BLS continued to grow. President Trump has nominated Dr. EJ Antoni to fix the issues at the BLS and restore trust in the jobs reports. Dr. Antoni has the experience and credentials needed to restore solution-oriented leadership at the BLS — solutions that will prioritize increasing survey response rates and modernizing data collection methods to improve the BLS’s accuracy.”
Gizmodo also reached out to the Labor Department and the Heritage Foundation for comment.
It’s no wonder that Trump wants someone with a different perspective to report on the economy right now. Many analysts see a slowly unraveling fiscal outlook with America’s jobs market in free fall. The Bureau of Labor Statistics report published on Friday showed that hiring in the U.S. had stalled, with just 22,000 jobs added in August. That’s significantly lower than what analysts had projected, which was some 80,000 jobs, the Associated Press notes. Some commentators feel that it is Trump’s policies—in particular, his tariffs—that have rattled companies and kept their hiring practices conservative.
Read the full article here
