Donald Trump on Tuesday said he’s never been inclined to fire Jerome Powell. It was a comically brazen lie.

Just a few days ago, Trump said Powell’s “termination can’t come fast enough.” When quizzed by reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Giorgia Meloni about Powell’s contention that he wouldn’t leave even if asked, Trump said, “If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast. Believe me.” A day later, Kevin Hassett said the White House is “studying” whether Powell can be removed before his term ends. On Monday, Trump called Powell a “major loser.”

Even if you could somehow set all of that aside — even if you’re willing to ignore Trump’s own words, and also Hassett’s remarks — everyone in the legal community knows Trump’s hoping to see Humphrey’s Executor overturned in the Supreme Court so he can at least have a leg to stand on if he chooses to go after Powell. That’s not the only reason he wants that precedent tossed, but it’s one of them. The Wall Street Journal confirmed as much last week, in the course of reporting on meetings at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump consulted with Kevin Warsh about replacing Powell early.

So, when Trump says, as he did Tuesday, that he “never” had any inclination to fire Powell, that’s not just a lie, it’s a repudiation of his own words, and also of his own economic advisor’s words and it’s a rebuke of a Journal article with a Nick Timiraos byline. Folks, Timiraos doesn’t just make up stories about the Fed. He’s basically the Fed’s unofficial spokesman.

“The press runs away with things,” Trump went on. “No, I have no intention of firing him [but] I would like to see him be a little more active.”

What happened here’s plain. Trump was spooked by Monday’s stock rout, so he toned the Powell-bashing down on Tuesday. It’s the same strategy he uses with the tariffs. He floats something bombastic, and if it results in a severe market backlash, he pretends he didn’t say it or that the media blew it out of proportion or that he’s changed his mind.

That silly charade aside, Trump’s absolutely considering a move against Powell. He’s not fooling anyone by denying that. If someone (Scott Bessent or even Warsh) talks him out of it, that’s great, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t considering it. He was, and still is.

One ironic consequence of Trump’s stepped-up assault on the Powell Fed is the extent to which publicizing the (for now one-sided) feud makes it less likely that Trump will get what he wants from Powell.

This isn’t exactly a nuance, which is to say you don’t need to be any sort of genius — i.e., “very stable” or otherwise — to understand that when a nominally independent institution has its independence threatened in public, the scope for that institution to act politically, even in private, is commensurately reduced.

No one thinks the Fed’s strictly, in all circumstances, apolitical. Anyone who asserts as much is naive or lying. But the maintenance of the apolitical charade is absolutely mission critical for everyone involved, because without the veneer of independence, the Fed becomes no different from, for example, Turkey’s central bank.

That’s a total non-starter for any developed, advanced economy in modernity, and it’s unthinkable for the issuer of the world’s reserve currency.

So, the louder Trump shouts, the more recalcitrant the Fed’s likely to be in the interest if preserving the myth of apolitical policymaking.

That doesn’t mean Powell won’t respond with rate cuts in the event of a sharp deterioration in the labor market, or an outright crash in stocks. He would. What it does mean, though, is that in the absence of a true emergency, his willingness to put a floor under equities is a function of Trump’s willingness to dial back the public derision. And Trump’s shown no such restraint, Tuesday’s fold to markets notwithstanding.

Further, Powell knows he’s on the way out next year anyway, which means just like outgoing GOP congressmen and women are free to be openly critical of Trump’s policies, a lame duck Powell can say pretty much whatever he wants knowing full well that Trump will precipitate a market crash if he tries to fire a Fed Chair without cause.

“There is nothing to be gained from this drama. We are on the cusp of an artificial and unnecessary crisis,” JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke wrote, summing up the escalating drama between the White House and Powell.

“Whether one likes Chairman Powell or not, he has been operating in this role for seven years; it is not worth a crisis to remove him,” O’Rourke went on. “As with most lame ducks, he has little to lose and therefore does not need to play nice.”

Although there’s certainly a strike price for the vaunted “Powell put” — let’s call it 4000 SPX, 5% UNR and maybe 5% 10s — anything short of that’s not going to elicit a reaction from a Fed Chair who’s obligated to protect the institution he serves from what many view, accurately or not, as the most egregious incursion on Fed independence since Richard Nixon.

As O’Rourke put it, “Don’t expect [Powell] to throw the President any lifelines until policy intervention is deemed appropriate.”

In the same Tuesday remarks, Trump said “it’s a perfect time to lower rate[s], and [I’d] like to see our chairman be early or on time, as opposed to late.”