Trump’s choice to head BLS posted racist and sexually demeaning remarks on Twitter

The since-deleted Twitter account of President Donald Trump‘s choice to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics included vulgar insults directed at Trump detractors, conspiracy theories, and sexually demeaning accusations against Kamala Harris.

Comments from around 2017 to 2020 were submitted by E.J. Antoni, a 37-year-old economist with the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, using a variety of display names and aliases. CNN confirmed that the anonymous aliases’ postings were remarkably similar to Antoni’s biographical information and that all of Antoni’s posts originated from the same Twitter account.

Antoni is a staunch Trump supporter and a vocal critic of the unbiased BLS, which determines US job growth and unemployment statistics. He was a “bystander” to the January 6, 2021, disturbance in the US Capitol, according to NBC News and CNN. He did not enter the Capitol, according to any evidence.

His nomination follows Trump’s dismissal of the Biden-appointed BLS commissioner and his accusations of corruption against the agency without any proof after a study revealed that employment growth in May and June was less robust than anticipated.

Through his media appearances and blog articles for the Heritage Foundation, Antoni has established himself as a monitor for government accountability. However, his own online history shows a trend of inflammatory discourse that regularly strayed into misogyny and conspiracy theories.

The username “ErwinJohnAntoni,” which has since been deactivated, was changed to “phdofbombsaway” in 2019. At least five sexually provocative tweets were written by the user, suggesting that Kamala Harris, the senator at the time, had used sexual favors to further her career.

Antoni responded to a tweet featuring a manipulated campaign poster with a sexually explicit image of Harris shortly after Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign ended by writing, “You can’t run a race on your knees.”

The woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, Christine Blasey Ford, was also called “Miss Piggy” by Antoni. The post, “Advice For Women: How To Land a Great Guy,” was shared by him in February 2020. It told women to “be in shape,” “grow your hair long,” “be sweet,” “learn to cook,” and “don’t be annoying.” “Angry feminists and simps will try to sabotage you in the comments,” the post’s conclusion said. Don’t listen to them. Pay attention to me.

The account’s existence was initially revealed by Wired, which also described Antoni’s posts discussing conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 election and COVID-19, as well as mentioning Nazi Germany’s World War II weaponry. Following the publication of that story, Antoni’s cousin, a right-wing podcaster, posted on social media to defend Antoni, stating that the family was pleased that their grandfather had served in the United States during World War II.

The White House supported Antoni in a statement, but it made no mention of whether he still adheres to the principles he stated on the account.

“Dr. EJ Antoni has been nominated by President Trump to address the problems at the BLS and rebuild confidence in the employment numbers. According to White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, “Dr. Antoni has the experience and qualifications necessary to restore solution-oriented leadership at the BLS — solutions that will prioritize increasing survey response rates and modernizing data collection methods to improve the accuracy of the BLS.”

Trump’s decision on August 1 to fire BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer drew criticism from economists who warned that politicizing the government’s employment data risks eroding trust and disrupting markets. The BLS has a significant impact on how governments, corporations, and the general public perceive the economy.

Antoni has no government experience, in contrast to McEntarfer’s decades. After graduating with a Ph.D. in economics from Northern Illinois University in 2020, he worked as an economist at the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Project 2025, which envisioned a plan for Trump’s second term, was designed by the Heritage Foundation.

Its recommendations included making BLS “a more manageable, focused, and efficient statistical agency” by merging it with the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Prominent economists have expressed alarm over Antoni’s lack of scholarly output. He co-authored a paper last year that claimed “the American economy has actually been in recession since 2022,” a claim that has drawn criticism from economists of all stripes.

In past appearances on cable media, Antoni echoed Trump’s dissatisfaction with labor statistics and with the Federal Reserve. Trump has also blamed the central bank of “election interference” for lowering interest rates around the 2024 presidential election, a charge Antoni made at one speech earlier this year.

The Senate confirmation process is challenging for Antoni, who is not now in charge of the FBI. The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, which includes moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, must first approve his candidacy.

According to a representative for HELP committee chairman Bill Cassidy, the committee intends to hear Antoni’s case if all necessary documentation is finished, CNN said.

Since the committee rarely holds hearings for the job, Antoni’s hearing would be unusual. However, it wouldn’t be the first time. This last happened to William Beach, another Heritage Foundation economist, during Trump’s first term.

As “phdofbombsaway,” Antoni

The Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive indicates that Antoni’s Twitter account was established in 2015. At first, it seems that he used Erwin J. Antoni III as his display name and his full name, ErwinJohnAntoni, as his login. Trump was shown in revolutionary attire with a huge rifle in his hands, an American flag behind him, a bald eagle perched on his other arm, and flames erupting behind him on the account’s profile image.

On the account, Antoni often identified himself as a “economist” under two different display names. During the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, the account twice claimed to be an economist in tweets.

After receiving his Ph.D. in May 2020, Antoni changed the display name back to Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III, although he kept the handle phdofbombsaway. CNN was able to link the account to Antoni in 2020 after a conservative research tank tagged him on it.

He tweeted that he was an economist four times that summer after changing his name to Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III.

Additionally, the account made 20 instances of the phrase “You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind” in both display names. At least three times, Antoni used the term “reap the whirlwind” on his professional account, “RealEJAntoni.”

Trump’s rhetoric was frequently reflected in Antoni’s posts throughout this period. A possible government shutdown was denounced by Antoni in January 2018 as a means of “derailing” the economy. The Democrats’ pitiful attempt to sabotage the Trump Train economy is known as #SchumerShutdown. “Get on board or get run over—it won’t work,” he wrote.

Following Trump’s infamous 2015 statement disparaging McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War, Antoni used his own identity to tweet, “I like a senator who doesn’t die,” after Arizona Senator John McCain passed away in August 2018.

The username of the account was changed to “phdofbombsaway” with the display name “Dr. Curtis LeMay” sometime in the middle of 2019, while Antoni was a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Northern Illinois University. Additionally, the profile picture changed to what appears to be a nuclear explosion. The username and display name appear to be a reference to “Bombs Away LeMay,” a reference to the Cold War general and his controversial stance promoting the use of nuclear weapons. LeMay ran alongside segregationist George Wallace on his 1968 presidential ticket for the far-right American Independent Party.

Antoni regularly attacked progressive congresswomen in the so-called “Squad” in various positions. He referred to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a “space cadet” and a “whack job.” He referred to her as a “antisemite” in November 2019 after she spearheaded an attempt to have Trump White House employee Stephen Miller quit after it was discovered through stolen emails that Miller had shared content from a White nationalist website prior to joining the White House. “No one wants to have sex with that catfish,” Antoni said in a March 2020 tweet about Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Trump critic. When Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted in support of “LGBTQIA+” issues, Antoni invoked a debunked conspiracy theory that Omar was married to her brother. “Does the I stand for incest? With your brother?” he He referred to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a “space cadet” and a “whack job.” He referred to her as a “antisemite” in November 2019 after she spearheaded an attempt to have Trump White House employee Stephen Miller quit after it was discovered through stolen emails that Miller had shared content from a White nationalist website prior to joining the White House.

He also repeatedly tweeted that liberal economist Paul Krugman was a pedophile, a smear for which there is no evidence – and one he also hurled at former President Joe Biden and former FBI director James Comey.

“Feminism is that belief by which women are liberated from false slavery to men in order to become true slaves to corporations,” Antoni stated in February 2020. Additionally, he remarked in another post that “attractive feminists exist” in response to a #TellMeALie post.

Additionally, he said in March 2020 that “there is only one sexual orientation — everything else is a disorientation,” dismissing the existence of LGBTQ persons.

His other offensive posts included sexually explicit anti-gay slurs directed at CNN’s homosexual anchors Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon.

Antoni also promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich — who was murdered in 2016 in what police described as a botched robbery — was actually the source of leaked DNC emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, rather than Russian hackers.

In a tweet criticizing then-Representative Sen. Adam Schiff, he interacted with an account that used hashtags to promote the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. Additionally, he regularly posted on Twitter under the far-right account “Catturd2,” which is well-known for disseminating conspiracy theories.

Additionally, Antoni promoted harsh socially conservative beliefs on the account under his given name.

“If the original principle was that abortion is wrong because it kills an innocent human life, then the manner of conception does not change that fact,” he said in September 2020, arguing against abortion even in circumstances of rape. According to this theory, rape-followed abortion would be a form of punishment for the crime committed by another person.

He once posted that abortion was “child sacrifice” while he was Phdofbombsaway in 2019.

After Trump was banned from Twitter after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, Antoni deleted his account. Using the username phdofbombsaway, he moved to the now-defunct website Parler.

In one of the few archived posts from the account, he posted a meme of a Twitter avatar-like bird wearing an Adolf Hitler mustache and Nazi armband, writing “I believe censorship is bad, 1984-level bad.”