By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
E.J. Antoni
E.J. Antoni has posted that being gay "is a disorientation," insulted Kamala Harris, and accused prominent people of pedophilia.
E.J. Antoni, Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has a history of posting homophobic and misogynist comments on social media, and he has embraced right-wing conspiracy theories.
Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.
Antoni is Trump’s choice to replace BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, a Biden appointee whom Trump fired August 1 after a weak jobs report came out. The president claimed the numbers had been “manipulated” but offered no evidence of this.
Antoni is an economist with the far-right Heritage Foundation, the think tank that created Project 2025, essentially a blueprint for Trump’s second term. The administration has implemented many of Project 2025’s recommendations, such as downsizing the federal government.
From 2017 through 2020, Antoni posted comments on Twitter (now called X) that included “sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump,” CNN reports. CNN confirmed that all the comments came from the same account, although they were posted under various usernames and display names. The names were all aliases, but the biographies associated with them were similar to Antoni’s, according to the outlet.
In a March 2020 post, he denied the existence of LGBTQ+ people, writing, “There is only one sexual orientation — everything else is a disorientation.” He also made “sexually graphic anti-gay taunts at CNN anchors Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, both of whom are gay,” CNN reports.
In 2019, when Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted in support of “LGBTQIA+” people, Antoni alleged that she is married to her brother, a false conspiracy theory. “Does the I stand for incest? With your brother?” he wrote.
The same year, when Harris ended her run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, he shared a sexually charged image of her and wrote, “You can’t run a race on your knees.”
“Antoni also referred to Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as ‘Miss Piggy,’” CNN reports. Another time, he tweeted, “Feminism is that belief by which women are liberated from false slavery to men in order to become true slaves to corporations.” And he once told Heritage Foundation interns that women are more likely to have average intelligence while men are more likely to be geniuses or have low IQs, The Washington Post reports.
He has accused economist Paul Krugman, President Joe Biden, and former FBI Director James Comey of being pedophiles, and he has called abortion “child sacrifice,” according to CNN.
In 2018, when U.S. Sen. John McCain died, Antoni tweeted under his real name, “I like a senator who doesn’t die.” That echoes Trump’s comment about McCain being taken prisoner in the Vietnam War: “I like people who weren’t captured.”
CNN and NBC have confirmed that he was a “bystander” at the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump forces trying to keep Biden’s victory in the presidential election from being certified by Congress. Various social media videos show him in the crowd, but there is no evidence he entered the Capitol.
“These pictures show EJ Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an emailed statement to NBC. “EJ was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest EJ engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal.”
He quit using the Twitter account after Trump was banned from the platform in the wake of the January 6 riot. After Elon Musk became owner of the platform, he restored Trump’s access. Antoni ended up going to Parler, a social media site that is no longer in business. One of his archived posts from Parler shows “a meme of a Twitter avatar-like bird wearing an Adolf Hitler mustache and Nazi armband” with the comment “I believe censorship is bad, 1984-level bad,” CNN reports.
Contacted by CNN, White House spokesperson Rogers did not address the content of Antoni’s social media posts, instead saying, “President Trump has nominated Dr. EJ Antoni to fix the issues at the BLS and restore trust in the jobs reports. Dr. Antoni has the experience and credentials needed to restore solution-oriented leadership at the BLS — solutions that will prioritize increasing survey response rates and modernizing data collection methods to improve the BLS’s accuracy.”
In order to become BLS commissioner, Antoni must be confirmed by the Senate. He will have a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee before facing the full chamber. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State has spoken out against Antoni, issuing this statement: “E.J. Antoni is seriously unwell—he is apparently a disturbed, hateful, conspiracy-driven man who does not belong in government. Not only is he an unqualified, partisan hack but apparently he has been a prolific promoter of vile, hate-filled screeds against women, sexual abuse survivors, and anyone who disagrees with Donald Trump. E.J. Antoni should withdraw his nomination immediately, and this kind of revolting behavior should be a red line for all Senators.
“Every Republican Senator should be asked about these comments and whether they trust Antoni’s judgment. Any Senator who considers voting to confirm him should understand: a vote for Antoni is not only a vote against America’s economic stability and the credibility of our jobs data, but the implicit endorsement of hateful, disgusting, and backward ideas that belong in the garbage heap of history.”
Charlie Kirk DID say stoning gay people was the 'perfect law' — and these other heinous quotes