This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced weaker-than-expected July jobs numbers, finding a gain of 73,000 jobs vs. expectations of 100,000. The report also downwardly-revised prior months’ numbers. When I looked at the report, I thought the mild miss made it hard to draw too many conclusions from, and thus didn’t think it was worth getting overly excited about. President Trump clearly disagreed.

On Friday afternoon, Trump announced that he directed the firing of the BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, who he identified as a Biden appointee and claimed she “faked the Jobs Numbers” during the election to boost the chances of Kamala Harris. Trump said he would appoint somebody who will produce “accurate” numbers from now on.

While there are plenty of heated debates over flaws in the current system for measuring jobs numbers, those have to do with more academic disagreements over the proper ways of collecting or modeling data. The people who work at BLS tend to be statistics nerds and there isn’t a strong case that the numbers are manipulated from month-to-month to advance specific partisan goals.

Last summer, the Trump campaign claimed that a positive jobs report amounted to pro-Harris “election interference.” Yet the final jobs report days before the election was a disaster for Harris that showed just 12,000 jobs added last October — the slowest growth in years. If the BLS were manipulating numbers to help her, why would they release a terrible report at that time?

Also, Trump is complaining about the downward revisions to prior months’ numbers. But that means that for several months of his presidency the BLS has been overstating job growth in his favor.

The baseless charges will help undermine public confidence in yet another American institution, which will also create less certainty for investors.

But it’s also hard to see how this helps Trump.

If Trump installs somebody at BLS who produces great numbers, anybody who isn’t already one of his supporters will dismiss them, and assume that the appointee was producing the positive data to keep the boss happy. And if the numbers produced by his own appointee turn out to be bad, it will make them even more convincing. Democrats will be able to argue that Trump’s hand-picked commissioner released numbers showing the economy is lousy.