President Donald Trump has announced E.J. Antoni as his new nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and he already has a lengthy resume as a staunch MAGA acolyte.

That's according to a Monday article in Bloomberg, which reported that Antoni – who is currently the chief economist at the far-right Heritage Foundation — has previously been praised by former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. During an appearance on Bannon's "War Room" podcast following the release of July's anemic jobs report, both Bannon and Antoni lamented that a "MAGA Republican" wasn't in charge of the BLS.

"Steve, we still haven’t gotten there," Antoni said earlier this month. "And I think that’s part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems."

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Trump fired former BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer after the July 2025 jobs report showed that not only did new job creation fall well below expectations, but that previous job growth numbers had to be revised downward after the BLS incorporated new data (which has been a routine practice under both Democratic and Republican administrations). Bannon pushed for Antoni — who Bloomberg reports helped author Heritage's authoritarian Project 2025 policy blueprint — to replace McEntarfer, calling him "the perfect guy at the perfect time to run the BLS."

During his appearance on Bannon's podcast, Antoni praised former BLS commissioner William Beach, who Trump nominated for the role in 2017, as a "great guy" and a "brilliant statistician." That praise is particularly ironic given that on Monday, Beach criticized both Trump and conservative economist Stephen Moore for misconstruing McEntarfer's jobs data in a press conference last week.

"He should have known better than to do that," Beach said, adding that Moore's numbers were "the strangest thing in the world."

Trump praised Antoni in a post to his Truth Social platform, calling him a "Highly Respected Economist" in his signature style of oddly placed capitalization, and added that jobs reports under Antoni's leadership would be "HONEST and ACCURATE." The president insisted that "Our Economy is booming" and that Antoni "will do an incredible job in this new role."

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Click here to read Bloomberg's full report (subscription required).

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