President Donald Trump is pounding on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, this time branding the Fed chair a ‘numbskull’ for refusing to quickly lower rates.
Trump has gone from saying Powell is doing a ‘terrible job’ to skewering him over a planned $2.5 billion renovation to the Fed’s 1930s-era building.
The renewed drama comes after the president admitted that it was ‘highly unlikely’ he would fire him earlier this week.
Trump backtracked on his firing threat after reports that he might do so caused another sudden drop in the financial markets.
But he again hammered into the embattled Fed chief on Friday over stagnant interest rates.
”Too Late,’ and the Fed, are choking out the housing market with their high rate, making it difficult for people, especially the young, to buy a house,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump has demanded that he drop interest rates by at least 3 percent and has been ‘too late’ in doing just that.
But Powell has said Trump’s tariffs caused market uncertainty, which has played into the rate issue.
Trump called Powell ‘truly one of my worst appointments.’
President Donald Trump once again attacked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after saying it was unlikely he would fire him
He said ‘sleepy Joe’ Biden ‘saw how bad he was and reappointed him anyway,’ then added that ‘the Fed Board has done nothing to stop this ‘numbskull’ from hurting so many people.’
Trump has lately also focused some of his ire on the Fed’s Board of Governors, and wrote Friday that it was ‘equally to blame.’
‘The USA is Rockin’, there is VERY LOW INFLATION, and we deserve to be at 1%, saving One Trillion Dollars a year on Interest Costs. I can’t tell you how dumb Too Late is – So bad for our Country!’ he concluded.
Trump’s blast came a day after Powell wrote the White House after receiving a blistering letter from OMB chief Russell Vought over the jaw-dropping price tag for the Fed’s renovation costs.
He wrote that ‘we take seriously the responsibility to be good stewards of public resources,’ adding that ‘we have taken great care to ensure the project is carefully overseen since it was first approved by the Board in 2017.’
He also said there were no VIP dining rooms being built and said there was no VIP elevator in the plans.
Powell also defended the ‘ground level front lawn’ of the building that also serves as the roof of a parking structure – noting it has been referred to as a ‘vegetated roof’ and ‘garden terrace.’
Trump has called Powell a ‘knucklehead’ and a ‘numbskull’
He defended green roofs and said it would help with stormwater management.
Trump has toggled between insults while threatening to fire Powell, whose role guiding an independent institution got a form of protection from a Supreme Court decision.
Powell’s term runs out next year anyway, giving Trump the option of biding his time and replacing him later.
At the NATO summit at The Hague, Trump called the Princeton-educated Powell an ‘average mentally person…Low IQ for what he does,’ and ‘a very stupid person, actually.’
