Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has risked Trump’s ire once again by outlining the “lunacy” of his threats to Federal Chair Jerome Powell.
The paper’s Editorial Board claimed that the “kerfuffle” over ballooning costs for the renovation of the central bank’s Washington, D.C. campus is “pure pretext” for Trump’s obsession with getting Powell to lower interest rates.
“President Trump has been annoyed by Mr. Powell since the Fed chief proved less pliable than expected after Mr. Trump appointed him in the first term,” the board wrote on Tuesday. It comes after Trump actually forgot that it was he who installed the Fed Chair in 2017.
“Mr. Trump now wants Mr. Powell to cut interest rates to help the economy, despite stubbornly elevated inflation,” the piece continues. “The President also is annoyed that the Fed chief keeps warning that monetary officials must monitor the economic consequences of Mr. Trump’s beloved tariffs to make sure they don’t become inflationary.”
Powell has defended himself and maintained that uncertain inflation forecasts—created by Trump’s tariff madness—justify his fiscal caution.
The WSJ, which Trump is suing for libel alongside Murdoch, reports that the president is rattled by Powell’s refusal to lower interest rates, something he has publicly chastised the Fed Chair for on many occasions.
That’s why the White House is pointing fingers at the Federal Reserve over the renovation project, originally green-lit in 2017 with a $1.9 billion price tag, the publication reports.
The cost is now hovering near $2.5 billion, according to the Trump administration. Donald Trump has even suggested that something more sinister than bad bookkeeping is at play.
“It’s possible there’s fraud involved,” he said last week, according to the New York Times.
One of his congressional lackeys, Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna, has even referred Powell to the Department of Justice over alleged false statements regarding the work at the Fed’s headquarters.
The WSJ writes that firing Powell is out of the question for Trump, because the legal wrangle would not be worth the bother. Powell’s term as Fed chair expires in mid-2026.
“This is the reason—the only reason—Mr. Trump and his acolytes are interested in the Fed office building," the piece says.
The board accused Luna of “trying to criminalize what at its core is an argument over monetary policy.”
It adds that this sort of subversive politicking is beneath the U.S. “Whatever Mr. Powell’s rhetorical inexactitude, it’s madness to create a new precedent for prosecuting officials for policy disagreements,” the WSJ piece reads. “Doing so is the road to the hyper-politicized monetary policy you’d expect in Argentina.”
The board adds that “waging lawfare against a Fed chief Mr. Trump dislikes is much more fun” than the government actually committing to reforming genuine issues with the Federal Reserve.
Listing some of those, like its practice of paying interest on banks’ reserve balances or the “appropriateness” of its ample-reserves regime, the board threw down the gauntlet to Luna: “If Ms. Luna has anything useful to say about any of those issues, she’s welcome to contact us at wsj.ltrs@wsj.com.”
