Chris Waller would really appreciate it if someone — anyone — would acknowledge how hard he’s trying to position himself as a candidate for Fed Chair.

On Friday, Waller showed up on CNBC to talk shop with Steve Liesman. His message was familiar: Tariffs aren’t likely to cause a sustained inflation impulse.

“It should be a one-off level effect and not cause persistent inflation,” he said. That’s Waller’s (ad nauseam) story and generally speaking, he stuck to it even when Donald Trump threatened to ratchet the overall, average US tariff rate north of 25% in early April.

I don’t want to accuse Waller of pandering to Trump, nor of auditioning for the Chair role, but gosh — it sure does feel that way sometimes.

To be fair, recent US inflation readings are quite favorable. So far (note the emphasis) there’s scant evidence of tariff-related price pressures. So, you could argue Waller’s just trying to get things right, not trying to be political.

But for some men — and I don’t pretend to know whether Waller’s one of them — the pursuit of influence and power takes precedence not just over principle, but over everything. If it’s the reins of US monetary policy you seek, this is a unique opportunity to seize them simply by indulging, in public, the inclinations of a populist.

Waller should be righteously indignant at Trump, and maybe he is. But whatever he does (or doesn’t) say about Trump’s encroachments, Waller’s decision to go on business television and proclaim his support for a rate cut at next month’s policy gathering just one business day removed from this month’s policy gathering sure looked like an attempt to ingratiate himself to a US president who on Thursday called the Fed board “complicit” in the alleged dereliction of “one of the dumbest, and most destructive, people in government.”

If I’m Waller and Trump calls Powell an idiot and a traitor — which is more or less what Trump said Thursday — I’m not inclined to be on television the very next day talking about anything, let alone cutting rates. Even if I think cutting rates is the right thing to do.

Let’s be clear: On-air chats with Liesman are a choice. CNBC cameos aren’t — you know — lectures, nor any kind of professional responsibility. Waller chose to go on national television and declare his support for a rate cut next month a day after Trump called Powell an unpatriotic dolt.

Waller’s macro rationale’s solid. “Inflation’s running very close to target yet we’re 125bps to 150bps above” the neutral estimate as reflected in the median long run dot, he said. That’s not wrong. Indeed, as I noted yesterday, Trump’s call for policy rates to be 250bps lower may be crazy, but it’s not nearly as crazy as it sounds. Waller’s remarks on Friday weren’t crazy at all.

But there needs to be a circle the wagons dynamic at the Fed. Trump’s broadsides — and his thinly-veiled allusions to challenging the Supreme Court’s bizarre legal logic exempting the Fed from a ruling that gives Trump latitude to dismiss agency heads — are beyond the pale. For one of the most prominent voices on the Committee to engage in behavior that could be construed as an attempt to curry favor with this White House is distasteful, to put it politely.

Waller went on to tell Liesman he’s “all in favor of saying maybe we should start thinking about cutting the policy rate at the next meeting, because we don’t want to wait till the job market tanks.” That’s all fine and good, but I really do believe there’s more at stake here than just whether rates are 25bps lower in six weeks than they are today.

The Fed’s grappling with the biggest threat to its independence at least since Nixon and probably ever. People like Waller have a professional responsibility to defend the institution. By campaigning to be Trump’s Fed Chair, Waller’s doing the opposite.