What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried again to fire a Fed governor after his case against her fell apart.

Trump has been adamant since returning to office that the Federal Reserve Bank should drastically cut interest rates, something he would personally profit from to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. To accomplish that, he's threatened the Fed Chair Jay Powell with an "investigation" into cost overruns Trump himself approved. When that didn't work, he declared that he was firing a Biden appointee to the Fed because one of his own political appointees claimed she had lied on a mortgage application.

That appointee, Bill Pulte, has also "found" evidence for the same claim against another of Trump's political enemies, California Sen. Adam Schiff. The "crime" they're accused of is declaring multiple properties as their primary home, which would qualify them for lower rates. But both Schiff and Cook have presented evidence that they did not mislead banks. In Cook's case, the property she supposedly claimed as a second "primary residence" was in fact clearly labeled on mortgage documents as a vacation home. 

Trump had already been told by one court that his firing of Cook was likely unlawful, since presidents can only remove Fed governors for cause, and the mere rumor of a minor offense from before Cook's appointment would not qualify. That court issued a stay preventing Trump's purported firing from taking effect. That was before Cook released evidence that, on its face, conclusively exonerates her.  

But in spite of his case only getting weaker in the meantime, Trump was back in federal court today, with a last-minute appeal asking to have the stay overturned. His argument was, in essence, that "for cause" means whatever he wants it to mean.

The Fed has a tricky task in front of it. The massive consumer taxes Trump has imposed in the form of tariffs are hurting demand, even for domestic goods, which often rely on imported raw materials. The slowdown in growth and anemic jobs market would normally be a signal for the Fed to cut interest rates, though not by anywhere near the massive 3% Trump wants. But Trump's trade war is also sending prices up, exactly as predicted, and lower interest rates would only make that worse.

It's very rare to have both a shrinking economy and rising inflation at the same time: there hasn't been real "stagflation" in the United States since the 1970s. But then it's also very rare for a president to impose a de facto 22.5% sales tax on imported goods. That rate hasn't been seen since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs during the Great Depression.

 

Incidentally, lying on mortgage applications does happen. Trump himself got caught doing it on a grand scale with the business he inherited, providing one set of numbers for taxation and another for lenders. An example of the kind of small-scale fraud that Trump appointee Bill Pulte accused Cook of would be his own father's apparently illegal declaration of multiple homesteads.

Why does this matter?

• "The law means whatever I say it means" is a dictator's argument. 

• The health of the American economy is VASTLY more important than Donald Trump making money personally. 

• Trump wouldn't be the first corrupt official to bring fake charges against a political opponent, but he might be the first to do it this incompetently.