President Donald Trump escalated his war on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell by sending him a Sharpie note.
It comes as the president has made numerous personal attacks on the Fed chair for not cutting interest rates as quickly as the president wants.
The note was revealed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday in a new briefing where she held up a chart with the president’s message written over it.
“Jerome - You are, as usual, ”too late." You have cost the USA a fortune and continue to do so - You should lower the rate - by a lot!" the note read.
It went on “Hundreds of billions of dollars being lost! No inflation.”
The president’s note was written in Sharpie on a chart that showed central bank rates. It was signed at the end by the president.
“I bring to you original correspondence from the President of the United States to our Fed Chair Jerome Powell, as the president has consistently stated, the American economy is booming,” Leavitt declared at the briefing.
Leavitt rattled off a series of interest rates from around the world on the chart before reading the president’s Sharpie note aloud to reporters.
The style of the note, written in marker with exclamation marks and a clear sense of frustration, gave off strong Mean Girls movie vibes, as there is a moment in the film where Regina George angrily writes a nasty note in the ‘Burn Book.’
While George’s message was about herself in a fictional movie about the horrors of high school girl friendships, there were similarities in note style.
Trump’s note on Monday was the latest in a series of attacks the president has made on Powell over several weeks. The criticism escalated over the weekend.
“He’s a bad person,” Trump said of Powell in a Fox News interview that aired on Sunday. “We’re going to get somebody into the Fed who’s going to be able to lower the rates.”
Trump has been trying to pressure Powell, who he nominated for chair during his first term, to lower the Fed’s short-term benchmark rate, but Powell has refused to bow to the pressure.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) left the federal funds rate unchanged this month at 4.25 percent to 4.50 percent at its fourth consecutive meeting.
Trump has blasted Powell in a series of appearances and in social media posts. He has called him “Mr. Too Late” and even “stupid.”
The president has held off on firing the Federal Reserve chair outright and installing a new loyalist, but even if he did, Powell cannot override the FOMC vote or unilaterally cut the rate.
Powell’s term leading the U.S. Central Bank is up next year, so there has been a lot of speculation over who Trump will pick to replace him. One person who said he would accept the job if it was offered was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The president even mused earlier this month that he would name himself head of the Fed and claimed he would do a better job.
