Trump was not the first American president to accuse the bearer of bad news of conspiring for the other side when he fired Erika McEntarfer from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on August 1.

When Richard Nixon was inaugurated as president in 1969, my uncle Harold Goldstein was the Assistant Commissioner of Manpower and Employment Statistics. He wrote in his memoirs (which I edited and self-published after his death in 2007) that Nixon was the only president he worked under in his 35 years at BLS who came around to meet government workers.

George Schulz, the Secretary of Labor, introduced him as the man in charge of the unemployment statistics. Nixon smiled as he shook Uncle Harold’s hand and said, “Keep them low!” Uncle Harold said he thought the president was........

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