Federal Reserve chief schools Trump in excruciating live fact-check

Washington: Not content with inviting world leaders into the Oval Office for a public dressing-down, Donald Trump is now going to other people’s workplaces to humiliate them on camera.

Today, it was the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, who, for months, has stoically – almost aloofly – withstood Trump’s near-daily onslaught about lowering interest rates.

If you thought Jim Chalmers was gently pressing the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut rates before May’s election, Trump’s entreaties are on a whole other planet.

“This stubborn guy at the Fed just doesn’t get it – never did, and never will,” Trump posted just 24 hours before paying Powell a visit in person.

“The Worst Federal Reserve Chairman in History,” he wrote a few days earlier, omitting the fact that he nominated Powell for the job back in 2017.

Trump has called Powell a “numbskull”, a “knucklehead”, a “moron” and “very dumb”. “You talk to the guy, it’s like talking to a nothing,” he said last week. “It’s like talking to a chair. No personality, no high intelligence, no nothing.”

That may be par for the course for a central banker. Few would be able to match the president for personality, even if it’s not always the kind of personality you want to emulate.

On Friday (AEST), Trump rocked up to the Fed, ostensibly to inspect an ongoing building renovation, which he has used to hammer Powell on cost overruns.

The figures are eye-watering. What started as a $US1.9 billion ($2.9 billion) project in 2023 has blown out to about $US2.5 billion – although, in percentage terms, that’s nowhere near as bad as our very own beleaguered North Sydney Olympic Pool.

The expensive reno involves two grand Washington buildings, constructed in the 1930s, and is scheduled for completion in 2027. By then, Powell will no longer be the Fed chair – his term finishes in May.

Taking their tour, Trump and Powell stood beside each other in matching white hard hats, in what looked like a deleted scene from The Odd Couple.

“It looks like it’s about $US3.1 billion. It went up a little bit. Or a lot,” Trump said of the renovation cost. Powell, who had been staring grimly at the floor, turned to the president and began shaking his head.

“I’m not aware of that,” the banker said. “It just came out,” Trump replied. Powell added: “I haven’t heard that from anybody at the Fed.”

Turns out the figure “just came out” of Trump’s jacket pocket, from which the president withdrew a document that Powell then inspected, quizzically, after donning his glasses. It took him just a few seconds to realise the ruse – Trump was trying to conflate two separate projects.

“Oh, you’re including the Martin renovation,” Powell said, referring to the refurbishment of another building, which was completed in 2021. “You just added in a third building, is what that is.”

“It’s a building that’s being built,” Trump said. “No, it was built five years ago,” Powell corrected. “We finished Martin five years ago … it’s not new.”

Unfazed, Trump turned it over to questions. Asked by a reporter what he, as a real estate developer, would do with a project manager who presided over such budget blowouts, Trump adopted his trademark phrase (and tone) from his days on reality TV show The Apprentice.

“I’d fire ’em,” he said.

Asked whether there was anything Powell could say to him that would cause him to back off from his personal attacks, Trump said: “I’d love him to lower interest rates”, and then slapped the bank chairman on the back.

And, in an audacious display from someone who has spent weeks calling him every name in the book, Trump batted away suggestions that he might try to fire Powell.

“I don’t want to be personal,” he said.

Gosh, no. Imagine that.

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