Republican senators raise concerns about Trump's firing of Labor Department official

Some Republican senators have expressed concern about President Donald Trump’s decision Friday to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after the release of the July jobs report

Some Republican senators have expressed concern about President Donald Trump’s decision Friday to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after the release of the July jobs report.

Several Republicans told NBC News that they would take issue with the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the BLS, if it is the result of Trump disliking the jobs report numbers, which showed the U.S. job market in the past months has been considerably weaker than previously thought.

Trump defended his decision Friday, saying without evidence that the report’s numbers were “phony” and accused McEntarfer of releasing favorable jobs numbers before the election to give former Vice President Kamala Harris an edge.

Follow live politics coverage here

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., said if the data is untrustworthy, the public should find out, but firing the commissioner before knowing whether the numbers are inaccurate is “kind of impetuous.”