Trump’s Pick for Stats Chief Loves This Nazi Warship & Is Bad at Math

Aside from being an insurrectionist, and blowhorning right-wing ideology and packaging it as viable economic insight, Antoni’s got an interesting track record–and it includes proudly showing off his giant portrait of Hitler’s favorite gunboat, the Battleship Bismarck. Since being tapped for the new position, the Daily Beast reports he’s “repeatedly appeared” in front of it during media interviews, and even boasted about it on a Bitcoin podcast. “The Bismarck, yep, in all his glory,” he told TFTC‘s host in October 2023. Mein Gott.

After being asked about Antoni’s “choice of backdrops,” a spokesperson from the White House responded to the outlet with resentment and a typo. “EJ is a history buff, as many Americans are, and has an appreciation for the significance of maritime history – his office is full of a variety of artifacts and artwork featuring US battleships and other famous vessels, including the USS New Jersey and the USS Misouri, that have been used throughout major wars,” the spokeperson wrote. (Comment if you can spot the typo!) “The Daily Beast is a joke – they will write up Democrats (sic) press releases no matter how low they have to reach to fabricate a false narrative.” The Daily Beast made clear there was never any press release about “Antoni’s Nazi art.”

Aside from interior design decisions, Antoni also wants to shake up the BLS–and its methodologies. In a post on Twitter, he criticized the department’s process of “collect[ing], process[ing], and disseminat[ing] data,” and last year suggested its findings were false. He wrote then: “The massive discrepancies occurring between official data and people’s opinion or the economy are not due to Americans’ having ‘wrong’ feelings about their finances, or a lack of understanding, as some pundits keep asserting. Rather, some of the official metrics do not align with reality.” 

Well, that’s scary. Some economists are especially “concerned” about Antoni’s track record of “distorting economic statistics” on behalf of the GOP agenda, citing “elementary errors” he appeared to be making to manipulate the actual government data he could be in charge of at the BLS. In other words: our stats man, if confirmed, might not be a math man!! Even more worryingly, he could use these new methodologies to actually legitimize the process of fudging the numbers, and could impact the official data used to build economic policy.

But there’s a teeny, tiny drop of hope. The Senate still has to confirm Antoni, and it’s certain almost no Democrat will support him, so just four GOP members have to defect for his nomination to fall through. (However, we once held out similar hope for the One Big Beautiful Bill, but Alaska Sen. Murkowski went and fucked it.) Hopefully, they can see what we see: the flags aren’t just red… they’re hellfire vermillion.

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