It’s been two weeks since poor job numbers forced Donald Trump to confront evidence of his own failures. Presented with data showing job growth in the United States slowing to a 16-year low, the president fired Erica McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics without cause.

The question that followed wasn’t whether the Republican would choose an awful successor to the highly qualified and widely respected BLS chief, but rather, how awful his new nominee would be.

As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out.

Trump this week nominated E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that used to have a reputation as a prominent think tank. Almost immediately, Antoni was exposed as an almost cartoonishly poor choice. His academic background, for example, leaves little doubt that he’s spectacularly unqualified to lead the bureau.

But there’s no need to stop there. Antoni has a record of misunderstanding the same government data that he’s supposed to oversee. He’s signaled an interest in moving away from releasing monthly job reports. He’s derided Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” He helped craft the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint. He’s been mocked by his contemporaries as “a joke.”

And just when it seemed Antoni’s record couldn’t get much worse, NBC News reported:

President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics was among the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with the White House saying he was a ‘bystander’ who wandered over after seeing coverage on the news. … [Antoni] appears in numerous videos posted on social media of the crowd on the Capitol grounds.

In fairness, it’s important to emphasize that there’s no evidence of Antoni ever violently clashing with police officers or entering the U.S. Capitol building. He also wasn’t charged with any crimes related to the insurrectionist attack. In fact, the NBC News report added, “The footage shows Antoni approximately an hour after the mob removed police barricades. The footage appears to show him leaving the grounds as people entered the Capitol and not entering the building.”

But there was a Jan. 6 mob, and the BLS nominee was clearly part of the crowd.

In a normal and healthy political environment, the White House would respond to developments like these by quietly pulling Antoni’s nomination. That appears unlikely: Given Trump’s Justice Department is comfortable hiring a Jan. 6 rioter who was filmed urging the mob to “kill” police officers, it’s difficult to believe that the president will be bothered by NBC News’ revelation.

But Trump’s opinion isn’t the only one that matters.

The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a Senate-confirmed position, and Antoni almost certainly won’t receive any Democratic support. Assuming that’s the case, Antoni’s nomination will fall short if just four Senate Republicans balk.

This might seem unrealistic, especially given GOP senators’ recent propensity for rubber-stamping other wildly unqualified nominees sent over by the White House. But Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who’ll retire from Capitol Hill next year, has suggested that Jan. 6 is a deal-breaker for him.

If Tillis sticks to that position — and Republican senators such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski give this nomination a serious look — Antoni’s confirmation might not be a foregone conclusion. Watch this space.