This is Hermes. He’s the messenger of the gods. Or rather, he was, until people stopped believing in those particular gods. That’s a different conversation. The point is, Hermes is one messenger that Trump hasn’t killed or fired yet. But if he were delivering job numbers or looked better than Trump on TV, you can bet Trump would’ve tried by now.

You know that Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) commissioner last week for bearing the bad, if unsurprising, news that tariff tantrums and petulant threats might be bad for the economy after all.

Here’s one thing Trump surely dislikes about the BLS.

“BLS operates as a federal statistical agency and is afforded autonomy to ensure the data it releases are as accurate as possible,” the Bureau explained in a post-firing release.

I mean, if you want to run a respectable authoritarian regime, you can’t let agencies just go around publicizing the truth all willy-nilly.

And if that didn’t fire up DJT, this one surely raised the hair on the back of his neck, which in public may actually be the hair on the side of his head. Or possibly the top? Nobody’s really sure.

““The process of obtaining the numbers is decentralized by design to avoid opportunities for interference. The BLS uses the same proven, transparent, reliable process to produce estimates every month.”

Outrageous and unacceptable.

So Trump slandered Dr. McEntarfer with a story about pre-election data. And I don’t want to upset you, gentle reader, but it turns out that his account was bullshit.

Things DJT Couldn’t Stand About the BLS and Its Leadership, Exhibit 3:

That’s Dr. McEntarfer. Qualified to do her job, not blonde, and not dressed to titillate. She never had a chance.

But let’s end on an up note with some feedback spoken by actual Republican senators into actual microphones about this latest affront to the reality-based community:

“That’s a problem.”

“Kind of impetuous.”

“If she was just fired because the president or whoever decided to fire the director just did it because they didn’t like the numbers, they ought to grow up.”

“We have to look somewhere for objective statistics. When the people providing the statistics are fired, it makes it much harder to make judgments that you know, the statistics won’t be politicized.”

Even the previous Trump-appointed BLS commissioner fired off a couple of quick rounds, recognizing the dismissal as “totally groundless,” … “a dangerous precedent.”

Funny what can happen when you enable a powerful narcissist who will do anything to shelter his fragile male ego from anything else that might bruise it.

I can’t wait ’til Trump hops onto his socials to whine about how the L.A. Olympics are rigged. How many days of events will he last? Which sport will compel the first medal count tirade? Make your prediction in comments. I’ll say he makes it to the end of the third day, tops.

Moving from the impetuous to the impeccable, the last word goes to Shawn Colvin, aided by Steuart Smith and Larry Klein.