Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) criticized President Trump on Sunday for firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), saying the president was acting like a “petulant child.”
The president’s longtime ally-turned-foe said he’s not surprised the president responded to the poor jobs data Friday by blaming the messenger.
“When he gets news he doesn’t like, he needs someone to blame, because he won’t take the responsibility himself,” Christie said on ABC News’s “This Week” in a roundtable discussion.
“This is the action of a petulant child,” he continued. “Like, ‘You give me bad news, I fire the messenger.’”
The president fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer hours after the Labor Department released data showing the U.S. only added 73,000 jobs in July, far fewer than economists anticipated. And the department reported stunning revisions to labor figures for May and June, showing 258,000 fewer jobs overall than previously reported.
Christie, who ran for president in 2024, said he understands how important jobs numbers are for informing policy decisions, but he said the BLS chief is not solely responsible for those data.
“It seems to me, from everything I learned over my eight years as governor, that it would be almost impossible for anyone to try to rig these numbers, because so many people are involved in putting them together,” Christie said on ABC.
“In the end, when it comes to the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the woman who was fired, when that happens, all she’s doing is being a conduit of the information. She can’t go back in through it and start lining and line-iteming it around,” he continued.
“So, it’s irresponsible from a position of facts, but it also shows you the way he manages,” Christie added.
Trump has defended his decision to fire the BLS chief and said he will find a new person for the role in the coming days.
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