“It’s like suddenly [Trump] woke up and discovered that if he wants to control the Fed, he actually has some power in putting people on the board,” Wessel says. “There’s some merit in having a diversity of backgrounds on the Federal Reserve Board. But the president is not looking at these people [Moore and Cain] because he thinks the Fed needs a diversity of views. He looks at these people as his delegates to the Fed.”

Just how much sway should a president have over the Fed? This question has long bedeviled central-bank chiefs. Inside Congress, even some Republican lawmakers worry that Trump is undermining the Fed’s autonomy.

One Republican senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk more freely, told me: “There are a lot of Republican senators who think it’s a terrible mistake—a mistake of gargantuan proportions—to allow the Federal Reserve to be politicized. I don’t like this whole business of putting people on the Fed for their political beliefs.”

Trump, the senator added, “ought to leave Powell alone.”