“Donnie, I got sent for.”

On Thursday, the Fed casually announced that Jerome Powell was summoned to The White House for a meeting with Donald Trump.

“At the President’s invitation, Chair Powell met with the President to discuss economic developments including for growth, employment and inflation,” a short statement, filed under “Other Announcements” in the press release section of the Board’s official website, said.

The Fed’s press office was keen to emphasize that Powell “did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy” with Trump, other than to “stress” that rate decisions are “entirely” dependent on the evolution of the incoming economic data.

In a nod to Powell’s preferred communications strategy, allow me translate that into “plain English”: Trump said “I want rate cuts, and I want them starting at June’s policy meeting,” and Powell said “With all due respect, we’ll cut rates when we’re good and ready and no sooner.”

In an everyday sense of the term “rights,” Powell would’ve been well within his to refuse Trump’s “invitation.” I don’t know the law on this, or even if there’s a relevant statute, but I assume Powell’s not legally obliged to accept such an invitation either.

Pride surely entreated Powell not to go: “This guy called you a loser in the front of the whole world, Jay! F-ck him and his ‘invite.'”

Jokes aside, the Fed’s well apprised that markets — and particularly foreign investors — are concerned about monetary policy independence in the US. Those concerns are a factor in the term premium rebuild that’s part and parcel of the drama playing out at the long-end of the Treasury curve.

In that context, it’s not too much of a stretch to suggest Powell ran a risk simply by taking the meeting. We’re just two weeks on from the US losing its last top credit rating, “sell America” remains the market zeitgeist and on multiple occasions since “Liberation Day,” the dollar sold off with Treasurys. The very last thing this situation needs is in-person presidential pressure on the Fed to cut rates.

Of course, if Powell refused the invitation and news of a refusal leaked, it’d be a mini-scandal, and it’d suggest a heretofore one-sided dispute has escalated into a two-sided feud. So, I suppose Powell had no choice but to have an overdone NY strip for lunch on Thursday. (“You want some Ketchup, Jay?” “No thank you, Mr. President, I ordered a baked potato instead of the fries.” “No, I mean for your steak. You don’t want Ketchup for your steak?”)

To his credit, Powell’s exhibited what certainly comes across as indignation in the face of direct questions about Trump’s allusions to firing Fed officials. In the same vein, Powell’s surely displeased with Trump’s penchant for eschewing subtle methods of influencing monetary policy in favor of out-in-the-open politicization. Despite Trump’s public harangues and petulant social media jabs, there’s been no indication whatsoever that Powell’s prepared to acquiesce to The White House’s pressure campaign.

But Powell — the unlikeliest of human bulwarks against authoritarianism — will be replaced this time next year with some manner of sycophant, it’s just a matter of how far Trump wants to push that envelope. And whether Senate Republicans are willing to gamble the currency on Fed Chair Larry Kudlow (or Stephen Moore or Judy Shelton or Pepe the Frog).

In the meantime, it looks like the Supreme Court will protect Powell even as the conservative justices trample on Humphrey’s Executor as though it wasn’t even there. The Fed’s a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity,” as the court put it, in a painfully belabored attempt to explain why a ruling that allows Trump to remove agency heads doesn’t give him carte blanche to overhaul the FOMC.

My guess is that Trump doesn’t agree the Fed’s “unique,” or at least not if that means it’s an institution beyond his reach.

In Thursday’s statement, the Fed said Powell told Trump the FOMC will set monetary policy to achieve its mandates and that those decisions will be “based solely on careful, objective and non-political analysis.”

Later, Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump did in fact pressure Powell to cut rates. The Committee’s refusal to do so “is putting [America] at an economic disadvantage to China and other countries,” she said, noting that Trump’s “been very vocal about that, both publicly and, now I can reveal, privately.”