Trump says he'll name people to 2 jobs closely watched by Wall Street
Trump was speaking to reporters on Sunday when he was asked about Federal Reserve Gov. Adriana Kugler's sudden resignation on Friday. Kugler, whose term was set to end in January 2026, said she would step down this week.
"She left early, and I think she left because she agreed with me on interest rates, and yet they were on the other side of the ballpark. So I'll be announcing that probably over the next couple of days," Trump said of Kugler and his plans to replace her.
Former President Joe Biden had nominated Kugler to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in September 2023. She was to serve the rest of the term of former Federal Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard after Brainard left the central bank to lead Biden's White House National Economic Council.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Kugler's abrupt departure comes amid Trump's ongoing beef with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Trump has repeatedly called on Powell to cut interest rates and step down. Powell, however, said he won't and has not responded directly to Trump's attacks.
Naming Kugler's replacement will allow Trump to reshape the Federal Reserve based on his preferences. The Board of Governors comprises seven members, three of whom were appointed in Trump's first term. They include Powell, Christopher Waller, and Michelle Bowman.
Waller and Bowman had given a rare double dissent last week after the Federal Open Markets Committee voted to keep rates unchanged.
In his interview on Sunday, Trump said that he will appoint a new Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner "over the next three or four days." He fired the previous commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, on Friday after the BLS released a weak jobs report and made downward revisions to job numbers from May and June.
"We had no confidence. The numbers were ridiculous, what she announced, but that was just one negative number," Trump said of the job numbers.
"If you remember, just before the election, this woman came out with these phenomenal numbers on Biden's economy. Phenomenal numbers. And then right after the election, they announced that those numbers were wrong. And that's what they did the other day. So it's a scam in my opinion," he added.
McEntarfer was appointed to the BLS by Biden in January 2024.
The BLS may revise its job figures, as the bureau continues to collect additional data after it releases its initial estimates. The BLS said on Friday that its latest revisions were "larger than normal" after it lowered total nonfarm payroll employment by 125,000 and 133,000 for May and June, respectively.
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that Trump wasn't firing people because they were reporting data he disagreed with.
"The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable," Hassett said.
"And if there are big changes and big revisions, we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example, then we want to know why. We want people to explain it to us," he continued.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
10 minutes ago
- The Hill
DOJ to launch grand jury probe over Russia allegations against Obama officials
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday directed Justice Department officials to open a grand jury investigation over how Obama administration officials handled intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 election. The grand jury probe marks another escalation of the Trump administration's focus on allegations of wrongdoing by Obama officials, including the former president. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has in recent weeks declassified various documents connected to Russia's election interference, claiming it showed 'treasonous conspiracy' by Obama administration officials. 'Following the compelling case outlined by DNI Tulsi Gabbard, which exposed clear and blatant weaponization by corrupt intelligence officials acting at the behest of the Democrat Party and likely former President Obama, the Administration remains committed to conducting a thorough investigation,' White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. 'This effort aims to provide the American people with the truth about the extent to which former government officials worked to sabotage the Trump administration and undermine the will of the American people in a clear attempt to subvert our Constitutional Republic,' Fields added. Fox News first reported that Bondi had directed the start of a grand jury investigation. The documents Gabbard has released do little to suggest wrongdoing by the intelligence community in seeking to investigate Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 contest. Gabbard and other officials have pushed back on established findings from the intelligence community and a bipartisan Senate panel that Russia showed a preference for then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Gabbard has alleged that Obama officials manipulated intelligence to harm Trump. Gabbard referred the documents to the Justice Department and FBI for potential criminal referrals, though the director repeatedly dodged when pressed on what crime former President Obama could be charged with. Obama's office issued a rare public statement calling the document drops a 'distraction' as Trump faced calls to release information about the prosecution of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence under Obama and has faced intense criticism from Trump officials, has called the allegations against him 'patently false and unfounded.'
NBC News
11 minutes ago
- NBC News
Pam Bondi orders grand jury probe of Obama admin review of 2016 election
Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed DOJ prosecutors to launch a grand jury investigation of whether Obama administration officials committed federal crimes when they assessed Russia's actions during the 2016 election, a senior Trump administration official said. The move comes after the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, claimed in a White House press conference last month that top Obama administration officials carried out a 'treasonous conspiracy' against former President Trump. Gabbard said she was sending criminal referrals to the Justice Department. A former senior DOJ official condemned the move as 'a dangerous political stunt.' And a former senior national security official pointed out that multiple past reviews, including ones conducted by Republicans, found no such crimes. "There's no logical, rational basis for this," said the official, who asked not to be named. The senior Trump Administration official said there is no exact timetable for when the grand jury will meet and that it could take months for the proceeding to begin. The news of Bondi's letter was first reported by FOX News. The official said a letter signed by Bondi instructs an unnamed federal prosecutor to begin presenting evidence to a grand jury to secure potential federal indictments. But the letter did not say what the charges would be, who the grand jury will investigate, or where the grand jury will meet. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. Democratic lawmakers have accused the administration of seeking to distract attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case. Conservative media and influencers have criticized how the administration has handled the case and demand the release of more documents and information. President Trump, Attorney General Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have all been criticized by conservative media and influencers over their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and material related to it. The idea that there was a conspiracy by the Obama administration officials against Trump was contradicted by a 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee review, which found significant evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Then Senator Marco Rubio, the acting chair of the committee at the time, signed off on the report. The plans for a grand jury investigation are the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration designed to rewrite the history 2016 election and seek retribution against those the president accuses of trying to sabotage his first term in the White House. Democratic lawmakers and former senior officials say Trump and his deputies have used the tools of government authority to try to 'rewrite' the history of the 2016 election, seeking to reverse an eight-year-old assessment that Russia waged an information war to boost Trump's candidacy. Trump and his supporters have long claimed that intelligence and law enforcement officials sought to undermine his first term by allegedly overstating Russia's interference in the 2016 election and investigating Trump's aides over their possible contacts with Moscow. They have accused former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan of using the probes as a way to undermine Trump. A lawyer for Comey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Comey and Brennan, who is a paid contributor to NBC News and MSNBC, have both denied wrongdoing. The intelligence community's analysis of the 2016 election and subsequent government investigations failed to satisfy the far-right and far-left sides of the American political divide. A probe by special counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia intervened in 2016 to undercut Hillary Clinton. But it did not find evidence thay the Trump team colluded with the Kremlin, as some voices on the left had suggested. At the same time, the special counsel Trump appointed in his first term, John Durham, disappointed far-right activists with his three-year investigation. Durham found no criminal conspiracy among Obama administration officials to fabricate intelligence about Russia's actions in 2016. He also filed no charges against the intelligence officers who oversaw a 2017 assessment that found Russia had tried to skew the election outcome in Trump's favor.
Bloomberg
11 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Gold Holds Gain as Fed Rate-Cut Bets Bolstered By Weak US Data
Gold held a small gain after traders became increasingly optimistic that the US Federal Reserve will cut rates at its next meeting in September. Bullion was little changed near $3,375 an ounce early in Asia. Traders are now pricing in a 98% chance that the US central bank will lower benchmark borrowing costs when it reconvenes next month, following weaker-than-expected job data that increased concerns about the economy. Lower rates typically boost non-interest bearing gold.
