Lisa Cook is a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors who has been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump. He has tried to fire her and been repeatedly denied the ability to do so, but nevertheless has persisted in that agenda — even as his meddling in the Federal Reserve has created worse economic conditions for ordinary Americans.
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Now The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, despite its conservative-leaning views, is blasting Trump for his ongoing war against Cook.
“Are we really doing this again?” The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote on Thursday. “President Trump last year tried to summarily fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, accusing her of lying on a mortgage filing. That removal lost in June at the Supreme Court, which held in Trump v. Cook that she is ‘entitled to notice and some opportunity to respond.’ Well, now she has had both, after an exchange of letters this month.”
They added, “The White House wrote Ms. Cook on Aug. 5 that Mr. Trump ‘is considering removing you,’ recapitulating the allegation that in 2021 she obtained two mortgages, weeks apart, attesting that both would be her primary residence. Her attorney wrote back Wednesday, recapitulating her defense that this was an ‘inadvertent oversight’ since Ms. Cook sought the mortgage for a ‘Vacation Home,’ and the lender knew where she actually lived.”
As Cook pointed out in her reply through her attorney, ““In 1993, President Trump reportedly acquired ‘primary’ residence mortgages for two different Florida homes just seven weeks apart,” as did both Attorney General Todd Blanche and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. The Journal highlighted this issue.
“The details matter, because the law says Fed Governors may be fired only ‘for cause,'” the Journal explained. “It’s no secret that these claims about Ms. Cook’s mortgage are a pretext, dug up by MAGA chihuahua Bill Pulte. Yet the Supreme Court declined for now to take a position on the substance. After Ms. Cook gets due process, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, courts may ‘assess the validity and sufficiency of such charges.'”
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Denouncing this as a “frivolous political fight” analogous to Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” because of the trade war he started against Canada, incorrectly saying his inauguration crowds were the biggest or using Sharpie to alter a hurricane map, the Journal concluded by also bringing up another one of Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve.
“By the way, when is the Fed’s inspector general going to release a report on the central bank’s building renovations, which the Trump Administration sought to turn into a criminal investigation of former Chair Jay Powell?” the Journal wrote. “Clearing the air on that would be a public service.”
Speaking with AlterNet earlier in August, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro — an economist who advised Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and presided over four budget surpluses under the former in contrast to Trump’s unprecedented $40 trillion national debt — explained how Trump’s war on the Federal Reserve is hurting the American economy.
“Trump has been attacking the Fed for as long as he’s been in office for not cutting interest rates,” Shapiro explained. “But you don’t cut interest rates when inflation is rising, because cutting rates stimulates the economy — meaning you increase demand without increasing supply, so prices go up. Powell refused to cut rates because he said, in effect, ‘We’re in an inflationary period; once we contain inflation, we can cut rates.’ Trump has made that much harder by increasing inflation through both the tariffs and the effects of the war on Iran. Even [Kevin] Warsh, Trump’s handpicked successor to [Jerome] Powell, hasn’t cut rates. But the market believes there’s a significant possibility that he will, given the pressure Trump has been putting on him — and in anticipation of that, they’ve been driving long-term rates up.”
He added, “We’ll see what Warsh does. My own guess is that he’ll wait until right before or right after the election to raise rates, because he doesn’t set policy alone — interest rate policy is made by a committee at the Federal Reserve comprising the seven members of the Board plus five of the regional bank presidents, and there’s increasing pressure among them to raise rates. They’re letting him put it off a little while longer, but there’s no good news on inflation. Just this week, Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on our largest trading partner, Canada, which will further increase inflation. The markets don’t have much confidence in Warsh anymore, so they’re pricing in a higher-than-normal likelihood that he’ll cut rates — even though I don’t think he will — and in anticipation of the inflation that would result, they’re raising long-term rates.”
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