Eji Antoni, a candidate for Donald Trump, who runs the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has a history of posting homophobic and misogynistic comments on social media, and he embraces right-wing conspiracy theory.
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Antoni is Trump’s choice to replace BLS commissioner Erica Mantelfer. Erica Mantelfer is the Biden appointee who Trump fired on August 1 after weak employment reports. The president claimed that the numbers had been “manipulated” but no evidence was provided.
Antoni is an economist with the Far Right Heritage Foundation, the think tank that created Project 2025, essentially a blueprint for Trump’s second term. The administration has implemented many of Project 2025 recommendations, including federal downsizing.
From 2017 to 2020, Antoni posted a comment on Twitter (now called X) that included “a sexually aggravated attack on Kamala Harris, gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude shaming aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.” CNN Report. CNN confirmed that all the comments came from the same account, but they were posted under various usernames and display names. According to the outlet, all names were alias, but the biography associated with them resembles Antoni’s biography.
In a March 2020 post, he denied the existence of LGBTQ+ People, “There’s only one sexual orientation. Everything else is disorientated.” He also made “Sexual Graphic Anti-Gay Provocation with Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper from CNN Anchors.” They are both gay,” CNN reports.
In 2019, when Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar tweeted in support of “LGBTQIA+” people, Antoni claimed she was married to her brother. “Are I standing for incest? With your brother?” he wrote.
The same year, when Harris finished her run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, he shared her sexually charged image, writing, “You can’t run a race on your knees.”
“Antoni was also called “Miss Piggy,” Christine Blaze Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,” CNN reports. Another time he tweeted. “Feminism is the belief that women are freed from false slavery by men and that they are to become true slaves for businesses,” he once told an intern at the Heritage Foundation that women are more likely to have average intelligence, but men are more likely to be geniuses or have a lower IQ. Washington Post Report.
He accused economist Paul Krugman, President Joe Biden and former FBI director James Comey of being pedophiles, calling abortion “child sacrifice,” according to CNN.
In 2018, when Senator John McCain passed away, Antoni tweeted, “I like Senators who don’t die,” under his real name. It reflects Trump’s comments that McCain became a prisoner in the Vietnam War. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
CNN and NBC confirmed on January 6, 2021 that he was a “bystander” and an attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump forces trying to prevent Biden’s victory in the presidential election from being recognized by Congress. Various social media videos show him in the crowd, but there is no evidence that he has entered the Capitol.
“These photos show Eji Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, showing that he is observing and leaving the Capitol area,” said White House spokesman Taylor Rogers. I emailed NBC a statement. “EJ was in town for a meeting, but it is wrong and defamatory to suggest that EJ is engaged in something inappropriate or illegal.”
He stopped using his Twitter account after Trump was banned from the platform after the January 6th riots. He restored Trump’s access after Elon Musk became the owner of the platform. Antoni went to Parlor, a social media site that is no longer a business. One of his archived posts from Parler shows “a Twitter avatar-like bird meme wearing Adolf Hitler’s mustache and Nazi armband.”
Contacted by CNN, White House spokesman Rogers did not address the content of Antoni’s social media posts and instead stated, “President Trump has fixed the issue with BLS and Dr. Antoni has the experience and qualifications needed to restore trust in employment reports.”
To become a BLS commissioner, Antoni must be confirmed by the Senate. He will hold a hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and face a full chamber before that. Washington State Democratic Sen. Patty Murray issued the statement in opposition to Antoni. “Eji Antoni is seriously uncomfortable. He’s a distracted, hatred-filled, conspiratorial-led man who clearly doesn’t belong to the government. Donald Trump.
“All Republican senators should be asked whether they trust these comments and Antoni’s decisions. Senators considering voting to confirm him should understand. Voting for Antoni is not just a vote for America’s economic stability and the reliability of employment data, but an implicit support for history-rich, disgust and backward ideas.”
Source: Advocate.com – www.advocate.com
