President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week and described a jobs report that included a big downward revision as “rigged.”

The revisions to previous estimates of the size of U.S. payrolls gains for May and June that prompted President Donald Trump to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer were by any measure extraordinarily large.

The monthly jobs report is already closely-watched on Wall Street and in Washington but has taken on a new importance after President Donald Trump on Friday fired the official who oversees it

And on Friday, when the July jobs report revisions showed a distressed economy, Trump had an answer: He fired the official in charge of the data and called the report of a sharp slowdown in hiring “phony.

Days after firing the official responsible for compiling the nation’s jobs statistics, President Donald Trump again claimed without evidence that last week’s jobs report, which showed lackluster July employment growth and large downward revisions for hiring in May and June,