Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno has attacked U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell by calling him the “Fauci of the financial system.”
President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell, whom he appointed to lead the central bank during his first term, for refusing to cut interest rates, regularly rebuking him over the issue on Truth Social and floating the idea of firing him.
The two men met in person on Thursday as Trump toured the building renovations ongoing at the Fed, griping about the inflated cost of the project and claiming it looked like it had cost $3.1 billion, not $2.7 billion, which was denied by Powell in a testy exchange.
Moreno, a former car salesman who unseated Democrat Sherrod Brown last year, was interviewed by Kaitlan Collins on CNN shortly afterwards, who asked him whether Trump was jeopardising the traditional independence of the Fed through his repeated attacks on Powell and whether he felt its distance from the executive was still important.
“Oh, of course,” the MAGA senator answered. “And we’re not talking about that. What we’re talking about is, is this guy competent?
Launching into his own attack on Powell, Moreno said: “The reason it’s now in our consciousness about this renovation is because we had him in front of our Banking Committee hearing, and he lied. He said the building did not have a VIP elevator and dining rooms and beehives and waterfalls. All that is just objectively not true.
“So again, either he lied before our banking committee, which, by the way, is a felony, or he’s just grossly incompetent. I fall more in the second one, given his track record, losing hundreds of billions of dollars, not managing the U.S. economy properly.
“Also, by the way, in that same hearing, he says it’s a good idea to forgive student debt. Imagine the head of the Federal Reserve, our central bank, telling our policymakers that we should forgive debt. That’s insanity. So this is a guy who’s hyper-partisan. And as a result of his hyper-partisanship, he’s costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Asked by Collins why Trump himself had nominated Powell if he is such a problematic candidate for the role, Moreno was dismissive: “Look, I’ve employed 1,100 people in my life. Out of 1,100 people, I made some bad hires. You recover quickly.”
He went on to speculate that Trump had “got some bad advice from somebody” and said Powell’s refusal to leave office voluntarily was “the height of arrogance and ego” and that he found the chairman’s position “pretty shocking.”
Pressed by Collins on whether he thought the president should go ahead and fire Powell, Moreno answered: “I believe he should leave. It would just be a lot easier if he just said, ‘Hey, I resigned.’ It would make the country better. It would make the Federal Reserve better.
“The president certainly, in my opinion, has all the right to do it. In a Supreme Court case called Humphrey’s, you can look it up, there’s a term called inefficiency, which basically means incompetence. And if that standard doesn’t apply to Jay Powell, it doesn’t apply to anybody.
“He’s the Anthony Fauci of the financial system in this country,” the senator concluded, alluding to the veteran medical administrator who guided the U.S. through the Covid-19 pandemic only to become a hate figure to conspiracy-minded conservatives.
It was left to Collins to point out that Trump “also kept Anthony Fauci on and gave him a medal.”
