President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics once ran an offensive Twitter account that posted misogynistic and homophobic abuse and entertained conspiracy theories, according to a report.
EJ Antoni, 37 – an economist with the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank behind the Project 2025 agenda for Trump’s second term – ran the account from 2015 to 2020 but it has since been deleted, CNN reported.
The network said the account – which existed under multiple names at different times, beginning with his own – was used to make degrading and sexist remarks about female Democratic politicians, including Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
The account was also reportedly used to make baseless allegations about left-leaning public figures, to subject gay TV news anchors like Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon to bigoted insults and to entertain conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election.
Favorite Trumpworld targets like the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and Christine Blasey Ford, who in 2018 accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her decades earlier, were also trolled by the account, CNN reports.
CNN shared a number of screenshots of offensive posts from the account, when it was known as @PhDofbombsaway, in its reporting.
Antoni was nominated to be the next BLS commissioner after the president ordered the dismissal of the Joe Biden-appointed Erika McEntarfer on August 1 after accusing her of publishing “phony” job creation numbers for July.
The position has been held in the interim by deputy commissioner William Wiatrowski, which did not stop the non-partisan bureau reporting even worse numbers for last month in its latest report on Friday.
Asked about Antoni’s candidacy, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers did not address the tweets in a response to The Independent but instead provided a statement attacking the BLS.
“The BLS was failing America’s businesses, policymakers, and families by publishing jobs reports with vastly inaccurate data,” the statement said.
“This has gone on for years without any real attempt at resolution while Wall Street and Main Street’s frustration with the BLS continued to grow.
“President Trump has nominated Dr EJ Antoni to fix the issues at the BLS and restore trust in the jobs reports. Dr Antoni has the experience and credentials needed to restore solution-oriented leadership at the BLS – solutions that will prioritize increasing survey response rates and modernizing data collection methods to improve the BLS’s accuracy.”
EJ Antoni is yet to comment on CNN’s reporting. The Independent has reached out to him for a response.
If Antoni’s nomination does proceed to a hearing in front of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, he can expect to be asked about his social media history, his lack of government experience and his reported role as a “bystander” at the Capitol riot in 2021.
