Trump raged at Mnuchin to pressure Fed’s Powell on economic stimulus

During that tense Monday meeting in the Oval Office, Trump fumed that Powell never should have been appointed and is damaging the nation and his presidency.

He then told Mnuchin, who had encouraged Trump to nominate Powell in 2017, to engage with the chair and ask him to take more-dramatic steps to arrest the stock market’s plummet, according to three White House officials and a senior Republican. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to reveal the exchange.

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Mnuchin has not commented publicly on this meeting, but he has said recently that he is in daily contact with Powell during the coronavirus crisis. Trump initially tried to brush aside concerns about the coronavirus’s impact on the economy, saying it would be short-lived, but the Oval Office meeting struck some of his advisers because it showed how furious he had become…

Trump’s push to prod Powell came during an Oval Office meeting where he also suggested to other officials that they should call the Fed chair and ask him to consider further interest rate cuts, the officials said.

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