Trump Says Could ‘Do Things’ To Jerome Powell, ‘Not Too Many’ Other ‘Boneheads’ Have Jobs

“Well he’s got a job”, Donald Trump responded, when asked on Sunday about beleaguered Fed chair Jerome Powell, for whom things seem to get worse by the week.

Powell turned in another lackluster performance at his post-FOMC meeting press conference on Wednesday, although he did manage to kind of stumble into the right answer when pressed about the prospect of imminent Fed balance sheet expansion to address an acute funding squeeze that rocked a crucial corner of financial markets earlier in the week.

Trump had already tweeted his displeasure with the Fed decision before Powell took the podium.

Read more: ‘Terrible Communicator’ Powell Inexplicably Coy On Funding Squeeze As Trump Laments Another Fed ‘Fail’

The next day, while touring a stretch of border fencing, Trump was asked by Fox whether Powell’s job was safe.

“It’s safe. Yeah, it’s safe.”, Trump said. “Sure, why not?”

On Sunday, Trump told the media that he “could do things if I wanted but I don’t want to do that”.

Clearly, “that” was an allusion to the possibility of demoting Powell, something the White House counsel explored the legality of at the president’s request earlier this year.

The highlight of Trump’s Sunday remarks about Powell came when David Martosko reminded the president that over the course of several tweets, he’s called the Fed chair a “bonehead” with “no guts”, only to say his job is safe.

“Are there other administration officials whose jobs are safe despite being boneheads?”, Martosko asked.

“Not too many”, Trump responded.

“So, at least one?”,  Martosko pressed.

Trump didn’t answer, but he did take to Twitter to lambast Powell anew.

“We should always be paying less interest than others!”, he shouted, in the course of quoting from an unidentified news segment during which someone apparently said Trump wouldn’t fire Powell. “Even if I should!”, Trump added.