When Jerome Powell was asked this week about his “friend down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he evinced something that looked quite a bit like exasperation.

Powell’s demonstrated the patience of a saint when it comes to Donald Trump’s attacks not just on Powell personally but on the institution he’s charged with shepherding.

Trump began testing the waters on public Fed criticism in 2018, and like every other sacred cow whose doorstep he darkened during his first term, central bank independence finds itself confronted with a quasi-existential threat in the early months of his second.

This really isn’t a drill anymore, and it’s almost ceased to be funny. “Almost” because Trump still writes like a 12-year-old who’s just been told he can’t stay over at a friend’s house because it’s a school night.

“Jerome Powell is truly one of the dumbest, and most destructive, people in Government,” Trump seethed on Thursday, a day after the Fed left rates on hold and marked up their core inflation projections. “And the Fed Board is complicit,” Trump added.

A couple of things. First, it’s perilous from a macro-market perspective to effectively tell the world that the days of independent Fed policy after over as soon as Powell’s term expires. And make no mistake, that’s exactly what Trump’s saying.

The next Fed Chair will be someone who agrees to give Trump a de facto vote on US monetary policy. If you don’t believe that, you’re naive to the point that you shouldn’t be managing your own money let alone anyone else’s.

Second, America’s increasingly prone to domestic political violence thanks in no small part to Trump, who should know better than to paint targets on people given that his own ear was a victim of political violence a year ago next month. It’s not an exaggeration (at all) to suggest he’s endangering Powell’s life, and the lives of Powell’s family, with rhetoric like Thursday’s.

It’s one thing for Trump to boast that he knows more about interest rates than Powell. In fact, if Trump had gone two whole terms without suggesting he’d do a better job setting monetary policy than the Fed, I for one would’ve been disappointed.

But this isn’t entertainment anymore. Although the Supreme Court made a half-hearted effort to protect the Fed while granting Trump leeway to dismiss other agency heads and personnel, their legal logic was torturously convoluted and therefore very vulnerable to being challenged.

Ahead of this week’s Fed meeting, Trump suggested he should just appoint himself Fed Chair and although I suppose this goes without saying by now, he’s not joking. I mean, look, he is, but not in the same way he might’ve been joking six years ago.

As noted here at the outset, Powell’s running out of patience with Trump’s antics. Unless you think he just doesn’t like Bloomberg’s Michael McKee, Powell’s overtly irritable response to McKee’s questions about Trump on Wednesday was indicative of a man who’s had just about enough.

When Trump says, as he did Thursday, that the Fed Board’s “complicit,” that suggests he wants to do more than just appoint a compliant Chair. He wants a panel of sycophants at the Fed à la the reconstituted Kennedy Center board which he now chairs after appointing himself.

In the same screed, Trump suggested the Fed cut 250bps and I gotta say: That’s really not the main problem with Trump’s ranting. I’m (obviously) not advocating for a 250bps rate cut, but let’s just suppose rates were 250bps lower. That’d put Fed funds at 2%, or 100bps below long run neutral. Stimulative — very much so — but not over-the-top stimulative. Would it be foolish? Yes. Probably. Is it the craziest idea Trump’s ever had? Not even close. We’re talking about a man who once suggested digging a moat on the southern border and stocking it with alligators. (Trump denied saying that, but he also denied taking a Sharpie to a NOAA hurricane map when we all saw it, plain as day.)

The main problem with Trump’s rants about Powell is the extent to which he’s demonizing a public servant (and indeed, a whole panel of them) in terms that suggest they’re enemies of the state. Powell, Trump said Thursday, is “an American Disgrace!” (Takes one to know one.)

To be sure, Trump’s just trying to get Powell to resign, not trying to get him shot. But it’s too much. The rhetoric’s now so far beyond the pale that it’s endangering more than just Fed independence. And the worst part about it is that Trump doesn’t care.