A top aide to Donald Trump has trashed the president’s handpicked Federal Reserve chair.
White House senior trade advisor Peter Navarro says the newly sworn-in Kevin Warsh, whom Trump gushed about mere months ago as someone who “will go down as one of the truly great chairmen of the Federal Reserve,” is actually out to sink MAGA.
“I was not a Warsh guy,” Navarro claimed on Steve Bannon’s show Thursday. “I’m not a Warsh guy. I see him not as MAGA.”
Instead, Navarro said that he views the Fed Chair as “MRA” or “MSGA.”
“Like ‘Make Recessions Great Again,’ you know,” Navarro said. “It’s like, or ‘Make Stagflation Great Again.’ I just, look—he sold himself, and now he’s selling us out. I think it’s pretty much as simple as that.”
Navarro’s rage stems from Warsh announcing Wednesday that he was hiking interest rates by 25 basis points to fight inflation. The White House wanted interest rates to be lowered—something it has constantly begged Warsh and his predecessor, Jerome Powell, to do this term.
Navarro, 77, is the president’s top trade and manufacturing adviser. He has cheerleaded the very tariffs that experts say have driven inflation up in MAGA 2.0—a domino effect that has led Warsh to refuse to cut rates.
Now, Navarro is planting seeds of a conspiracy that Warsh was secretly a Democrat all along.
“I don’t know whether it’s a gap in his training, or whether he’s just one of them, and this is political,” Navarro said, speaking outside the White House. “I fear it’s political. I mean, if he understood this issue, he would have gone against the grain of what is a very politicized, anti-Trump Fed, and tried to lead on the issue and maybe lose, but at least try to lead. He did not do that.”
Bannon, a former White House adviser to Trump, pointed out that the Fed Board unanimously backed a rate hike. Navarro says MAGA was duped and that Warsh has made a “monumental mistake” by raising rates.
“The bottom line is they made a monumental mistake, and it’s going to come back to haunt us,” he said. “And they’re going to do it again in October because they don’t read history like you do and I do.”
Trump, 80, criticized Warsh’s decision to raise rates but did not come out quite as guns blazing as he did during Powell’s tenure.
“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR,” Trump reacted on Truth Social. “LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST.”
Trump told reporters later that he still has confidence in his Fed Chair pick, saying he spoke with him.
“I talked to Kevin, and I said you might as well vote with the board because it’s not going to matter,” Trump said. “The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing.”
