The takeover having failed, Trump decides to rid himself of the meddlesome Fed by pointing out that back in 2018 he was right and the Fed was wrong about where interest rates should be set (as Powell tacitly admitted by cancelling some interest rate increases planned for 2019 in favor of “patience”). Why rely on his ability to jawbone the Fed, Trump reasoned, when it would be possible to give him the power to set rates, no central bank needed? Besides, the whole idea of a central bank is to turn the economy over to elitists, a coup that disenfranchises the populist masses. Yes, the government does business through the Bank, but it could do such banking business as it has with state banks, located in states that went Republican in 2020.

Given that power, Trump promises that he would lower interest rates, to applause from small businesses, students knee-deep in debt, homeowners with variable rate mortgages, the Treasury burdened with interest payments on the massive national debt that resulted from the Trump tax cuts, and Donald Trump, Jr.

Congress does as told—oops, as asked. At a signing ceremony held in the Oval Office under the portrait of Andrew Jackson, Trump adds control of monetary policy to his control of fiscal policy. He then replaces the Jackson portrait with one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and begins planning for a rally at which he can mount an attack on the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution.