will be his pick to be the next secretary of labor. we ll have his statement. acosta, jake, we re told is there with him as well. presumably he ll make a statement at the same time and see if the president answers questions. let s bring in the senior economics analyst. the former senior economic adviser for the trump campaign. he joins us from columbia, south carolina. also with us cnn s senior white house correspondent jim acosta who is live in the east room. stephen moore, let me talk to you first. what do you think about the alexander acosta pick. have you worked with him in the past? what do you know about him? i don t know a whole lot about him, jake. i just went through the release that the press that the press release that the white house just put out about him. pretty amazing resume. he certainly knows labor law. one interesting thing about his resume is that he was one of the prosecutors against jack abramov which i found interesting. i don t know the man but it s a
experience with all these students, how do you think that will play out? that s a great question. i don t know, but, obviously, immigration is the key issue for donald trump and restraining illegal immigration is one of his key promises. so we ll see how that all plays out. i want to go back, though, wolf, to my original point. this is such a departure from andy puzder. what a lot of conservatives like myself liked about andy was hat he was a businessman and a new approach to the labor department. somebody who actually knows something about how to hire workers, how to mack it easier for employers to hire workers. as was said earlier, but worth emphasizing, acosta is much more of a traditional pick for this so he s not the disruptor that andy puzder would have been. all right usteven moore, jim acosta. we re going to squeeze in another quick break, but we ll be right back. stay with us. it s over.
as you were just talking about, there have been republican defections, not only in the case of andy puzder, but also in the case of betsy devos and, just yesterday it was announced that susan collins, senator from maine, was having problems with scott pruitt, the pick for the epa. but i think david chalian is exactly right. to have one cabinet nominee go down during this process is fairly low historically. and that s a sign that the republicans are very much in control here in washington. when they have the numbers in the senate they can basically do what they want with this cabinet. and that s part of the reason why you ve seen president trump select what has been a fairly in your face cabinet when you look at some of these nominees across the board. but at the same time, i think as david chalian was noting, the selection of alexander acosta being more of an establishment republican pick, being the first latino in the cabinet, i think is a that is a very good call here. this may be
numbers came out. what will the labor department do under an alexander acosta when it comes to the unemployment figures. as we heard during the campaign, then candidate trump was very critical of the unemployment figures. he often thought and said publicly at his rallies that he thought that the unemployment rate was much, much higher than where it is basically standing right now which is just below 5%. so being this an establishment pick by president trump, putting alexander acosta over the labor department, my sense is they ll continue business as usual over at that department when it comes to trusting those figures coming from the federal government. so i do think that is an interesting thing to watch, jake. obviously there s been a lot said and written about working class voters supporting president trump. that is why he is in the white house. support from those groups in overwhelming numbers. white working class voters in states like opinion ppennsylvan
administration himself. that s right. and we are told, my colleague sara murray is reporting that president trump met with some of the candidates for this pick today. yesterday afternoon. so this just occurred in the last 24 hours. obviously, as things were unraveling for andy puzder, this white house had to get cracking in terms of finding somebody else and we re told that this just happened yesterday afternoon. that he was talking to some of these candidates, including alexander acosta. this is much more of an establishment pick. he served in the bush administration. he s going to be the first latino in the cabinet if he s confirmed. that was a story, obviously, we followed during the transition process was whether or not president trump would actually place a latino in his cabinet and i think another interesting question to watch, jake, as this unfolds, if alexander acosta becomes the labor secretary is what happens. we had this conversation when the last batch of jobless