National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett responded to Sen. Chuck Schumer calling him a “flack,” on CNBC this morning, and said the appearance of partisan manipulation of jobs numbers more than justified the firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.

Kevin Hassett should be fired.

He is defending Trump’s lies about the jobs report and the firing of Erika McEntarfer.

The business community should demand a flack like him has no role at the Fed.

– Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 4, 2025

“Yeah, I’m sure President Trump is going to rush out to fire me today because he has such high regard for Chuck Schumer,” Hassett joked. “The jobs numbers were slower than we expected. I think that one of the explanations for revisions is they have more complete data, and so I think it is likely that the revisions are a better read of the data-if the data are not being manipulated,” he also said. “With our eyes on the horizon, we’re highly optimistic about the future of this economy. We’ve got the Big Beautiful Bill. We’ve got expensing of factories. We’ve got no taxes on tips. We’ve got incomes going up $ 10,000 for a typical family,” Hassett said. “And we’ve got all of that happening while the budget deficit is declining rapidly because of the tariff revenue. And so there are a lot of really good reasons to be super optimistic about the second half of the year.”

KEVIN HASSETT: The bottom line is, I’d say the frustration that the president has is that he believes other countries have cut rates, and the U.S. hasn’t. And he worries-just as with the BLS-he worries that maybe there’s some partisan calculus going on here. And if you look at the Fed votes, it’s very disappointing. I think, as a person who’s long believed in the independence of the Fed, that we would have Fed votes that were separated along party lines-it’s very disappointing to me. That the Fed would be putting an explanation out there for these unusually high rates-that there’s this massive uncertainty and massive inflation coming from tariffs-without actually showing us their work. So give us some work. Show us why you think it is. And then maybe we’ll be convinced and know it’s not partisan. CNBC HOST: Chuck Schumer wants you fired. He hasn’t said that he wants you “taken out” like a Supreme Court justice, but he says you need to be fired because you’re a flack! Which is unheard of with people in your role. We’ve never seen that before. HASSETT: You’re serious? CNBC HOST: Did you read the whole thing, Kevin? Just because you probably haven’t seen it-unless you did before. Kevin Hassett should be fired. He’s defending Trump’s lies about the jobs report and the firing of Eric McKeever. The business community should demand a flack like him have no role at the Fed. Interestingly, you don’t have a role at the Fed-but that’s a separate matter. HASSETT: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’m sure President Trump’s going to rush out to fire me today because he has such high regard for Chuck Schumer. CNBC HOST: Okay, Kevin. Let me ask you-back to Joe’s point though. The markets seemed to believe the revisions in the numbers more than they believed the original numbers. That’s why you saw bond yields tumble on Friday. Are you in agreement with that? Do you think we are starting to see a real slowdown in the jobs market? HASSETT: Yeah, I think the jobs numbers were slower than we expected. I think that one of the explanations for revisions is they have more complete data, and so I think it is likely that the revisions are a better read of the data-if the data are not being manipulated. And so, yeah, I would say that it’s a little bit weaker. But don’t forget-this is before the Big Beautiful Bill is really kicking in. And so, with our eyes on the horizon, we’re highly optimistic about the future of this economy. We’ve got the Big Beautiful Bill. We’ve got expensing of factories. We’ve got no taxes on tips. We’ve got incomes going up $ 10,000 for a typical family. And we’ve got all of that happening while the budget deficit is declining rapidly because of the tariff revenue. And so there are a lot of really good reasons to be super optimistic about the second half of the year. But absolutely, that jobs number-if the revision turns out to be true-does suggest that there’s less momentum than we thought. And you can say that the dissenters at the Fed saw this coming. They specifically mentioned that there were signs of labor market weakening. They were pointing, I think, to the ADP release as much as anything. So yeah, I think the pressure on the Fed to get its policy in order is going to be higher because of this. And that’s, you know, proving that the president was right about it. CNBC HOST: I just want to go back to one thing that was said by the president-and I think you may have referred to it as well. This idea that these numbers are politically motivated, and most importantly, that somehow before the election they were being manipulated. And the thing that I’m unclear about is-the revisions came before the election though, right? I mean, when I say the revisions, it looked like the economy started to actually peter out and wasn’t doing as well, which I think to some degree might have helped the president-I don’t know-before the ultimate date of the election. Is that not right, in terms of just the timing of all of these revisions? HASSETT: The big 818,000 revision did happen before the election-but it was after Joe Biden had withdrawn. And so it looks-again, to partisans-like they were jacking up the jobs numbers until Joe Biden was out of the picture. I’m not saying that’s what they did, but you really don’t want to have partisan patterns in these massive revision data items. And the way to fix that is to have transparency-so that people know where the revisions come from. And so I think it’s a massive failure of our data agencies to be making willy-nilly changes that are difficult to understand-and often have apparently partisan patterns.

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