Fed Chair Nominee Caught in Massive Lie on What Trump Told Him

Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego should be commended for some excellent fact-checking of Trump crony Kevin Warsh on Tuesday.

Warsh is Trump’s pick to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve after Jerome Powell’s term expires in May. During Warsh’s Senate committee confirmation hearing, Gallego tried to suss out whether Warsh was going to put the president’s political interests ahead of the country’s economic health.

“Earlier today, you said to Senator [John] Kennedy that President Trump never demanded you to cut interest rates in your job interview. Is that your sworn testimony?” Gallego asked.

“That is, Senator,” Warsh said.

“Well, someone here is lying, then,” Gallego replied. “It’s either you or President Trump. Because in an interview with The Wall Street Journal of December 12, President Trump confirmed he pressed you on your commitment to support interest rate cuts.”

Gallego helpfully cited the Journal article for Warsh: “During a 45-minute meeting … the president pressed Warsh on whether he could trust him to support interest-rate cuts if he were chosen to lead the central bank, according to people familiar with the meeting. Trump, in the Journal interview, confirmed that reporting.”

Warsh responded by claiming the reporters who wrote the story—Meridith McGraw, Nick Timiraos, and Brian Schwartz—were fibbing:

“Senator, there’s, of course, a third alternative. You cite a couple of reporters for a leading financial newspaper.… I think those reporters either need better sources, or better journalistic standards.”

Of course, the cited “source” here is Trump himself, which Gallego pointed out, asking if that meant Warsh thought Trump was lying. Warsh began to reply before Gallego unfortunately cut him off and moved on. Gallego did ask Warsh what he would say if the Journal verified all of its reporting, to which Warsh repeated the same unsatisfying point about journalists needing better sources and standards.

Warsh has previously worked on Wall Street, as an economic adviser in the George W. Bush administration, and as a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011. With a net worth in the hundreds of millions, he would be the richest Fed chair ever, which feels fitting for a presidency that seems to be about the rich laughing in the face of working Americans as much as possible.

Trump would love to see a Powell replacement as soon as possible. Trump appointed the mild-mannered, bespectacled Powell in 2017, but Powell has since drawn the president’s ire by being boringly responsible and refusing to cut interest rates. Trump has even weaponized the Department of Justice by subpoenaing Powell over a federal building renovation (a judge tossed the lawsuit out).

In the face of mounting pressure, Powell has not wavered. His quiet resistance to the president has made him something of a cult hero among Democrats, who have crafted a few social media fancams in his honor.

President Trump and his MAGA coalition are beginning to panic as the threat of a successful Democratic redistricting vote on Tuesday in Virginia looms over them.

“This is what they’re going to be doing.… If [the Democrats] get additional House seats, at some point, if they get these additional seats they’re gonna be making changes at the federal levels,” Trump warned on a tele-rally call with Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday.

The ballot measure to redraw the congressional map could give the Democrats a greater chance to regain control of the House of Representatives, giving them potentially four more seats. Under the new map, Virginia Democrats could hold every House seat except for one.

That would in turn have massive implications for the president’s agenda, which he—and the rest of his supporters—are very concerned about.

Fox News’s Brit Hume lamented the effort as one not to ensure fairness but to “ensure Democrats have many more seats than they do now.”

MAGA muse Steve Bannon shared an even bleaker diagnosis.

“This is their plan.... Not just, are they going to take power and use these four seats to impeach Trump? But they’re going to use this as a template for the rest of the country. It’s coming,” Bannon said on the Monday episode of his War Room podcast. “These Democrats are demonic.… If they weren’t demonic, wouldn’t they show you the map? Wouldn’t they walk you through the logic?”

Each of these comments ignores that these redistricting wars started with Texas Republicans doing the bidding of Trump last year.

Polls close Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from the House Tuesday.

The move came just hours before the House Ethics Committee was supposed to announce sanctions against the Florida congresswoman, who allegedly took $5 million in Covid relief funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and funneled it into her campaign. She also purchased luxury items for herself, including a diamond ring. The committee found her guilty of 25 ethics violations, and she faces 15 federal indictments.  

In a statement posted on X, Cherfilus-McCormick attacked the committee for refusing her “new attorney’s reasonable request for time to prepare my new defense,” saying the process was unfair. 

“By going forward with this process while a criminal indictment is pending, the Committee prevented me from defending myself. I will not stand by and pretend that this has been anything other than a witch hunt. I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished,” the statement said. 

Cherfilus-McCormick is the third member of Congress to resign in the last week, following fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell for numerous sexual misconduct allegations and Republican Tony Gonzales for explicit text messages sent to two former employees, one with whom he engaged in an affair who later committed suicide. 

Cherfilus-McCormick had sought a pardon from President Trump, approaching him at a White House Christmas party in December. Republican Representatives Nancy Mace and Greg Steube had each pushed for her expulsion. Mace and Republican Cory Mills also face Ethics Committee investigations, but have resisted calls for them to resign. 

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump is still not happy that his tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court, and he said Tuesday that he would “remember” the companies that don’t seek refunds.

The president spoke to CNBC’s Squawk Box over the phone in a morning interview, and anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin asked him about large companies, such as Apple and Amazon, that haven’t sought tariff reimbursements because they were worried about “offending” the president.

“Would you find it offensive for them to try to collect a refund?” Sorkin asked Trump.

“I think it’s brilliant if they don’t do that. I actually think if they don’t do that, they got to know me very well. I’m very honored by what you just said. If they don’t do that, I’ll remember them,” Trump said, before going off on a tangent about the Supreme Court and birthright citizenship.

Trump’s words could be considered as a threat to companies that do seek refunds for the tariffs they paid, as would be their right under the Supreme Court’s ruling. Trump has praised companies whose executives have cozied up to him or donated large amounts of money to one of his personal projects, and has attacked those that he sees as disloyal to him or his agenda.

The president is explicitly saying that if businesses don’t ask for the money that they are legally owed for the tariffs, they will be in his good graces and can expect positive treatment from the White House. That is highly unethical and, from any other president, would be met with a huge backlash from Congress and media commentators. But since Trump has basically normalized corruption, he’s not likely to face any consequences.

Kevin Warsh, the man Donald Trump tapped to run the Federal Reserve, told Congress Tuesday that there’s only one detail that he and the president disagree on.

In the midst of a heated exchange with Senator Elizabeth Warren over his previous pledges to “stand up to Trump,” Warsh failed to name a single line item from the MAGA agenda with which he disagreed.

“Well, senator, the Federal Reserve in recent years has wandered outside of its remit, wandered into other areas,” said Warsh, dodging Warren’s question entirely.

“Just one. Just one little place where you disagree with Donald Trump,” pressed Warren.

“Well, I do have a disagreement, actually, senator, with the president. I think even this morning he said he thought that I was out of central casting. I think central casting—I’d look older, grayer, and maybe show up here with a cigar of sorts,” Warsh smirked.

“Quite adorable, but you know we need a Fed chair who is independent. That’s the only way we preserve the independence of the Federal Reserve,” Warren bit back. “If you can’t answer these questions, you don’t have the courage and you don’t have the independence.”

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen similarly questioned Warsh’s chutzpah, citing his monetary policy record on the basis that Warsh’s positions on interest rates “seems to shift with what’s politically convenient, rather than based on sound economic judgment.”

Warsh’s name was a surprise mention late last year when Trump first began floating his replacements for Jerome Powell. Despite railing against Powell’s inflation rates for the better part of his second term, Trump tapped Warsh, another well-known inflation hawk who cut his teeth during the George W. Bush administration and later during the fallout of the Great Recession. But the 56-year-old financier has since changed his tune on the matter and, in doing so, has caught the president’s attention.

Trump has already made his expectations for Warsh crystal clear. Speaking with CNBC earlier Tuesday, Trump said that he would be disappointed if Warsh did not cut interest rates.

Warsh, in turn, made his loyalty clear during his Senate hearing. He refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, in another apparent attempt to elevate himself to the Trump administration.

Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed ripped Warsh for his transparent affinity for Trump, directly questioning him about Trump’s comments on the business network. Warsh responded that he would maintain independence despite Trump’s pressure campaign to cut rates. Later, in an exchange with Senator John Kennedy, Warsh said that Trump had never asked him to “predetermine, commit, fix, decide on any interest rate decision in any of our discussions.”

“Nor would I ever agree to do so,” Warsh insisted.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, tried to dodge questions Tuesday about his financial ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Elizabeth Warren asked Warsh about more than $100 million in investments that he has “refused to disclose to ethics officials and the public,” specifically assets held in vehicles called “THSDFS LLC” and the “Juggernaut Fund.” Warren directly asked the Fed chair nominee whether any of his assets had to do with President Trump or his family, the Chinese government, money laundering, or Jeffrey Epstein.

Warsh refused to answer, saying only that he would sell those investments if he was confirmed. Warren pressed further, asking specifically if Warsh would tell the committee if he had financial ties to Epstein.

“Are you refusing to tell us if you have investments, for example, in vehicles set up to advance Jeffrey Epstein? Is that what you’re telling us—you just won’t tell us?” Warren asked.

Warsh again didn’t answer the question.

“Senator, what I’m telling you is that those assets that you represent at Juggernaut will be sold if I’m confirmed before I take office and sign the oath of office,” Warsh said.

Warren then asked if he would “at least disclose how you would plan to disclose and divest these secret assets,” citing a scenario in which a billionaire looking for inside information from the Fed would cut him a check for $100 million. Warsh still would not answer the question, instead saying that he had come to an agreement with the Office of Government Ethics to divest his assets.

Warsh’s name has popped up a couple of times in the government’s Epstein files. While that doesn’t implicate him in any of Epstein’s crimes, it does show that they traveled in the same circles. Warsh, who would become the wealthiest Fed chair in more than 100 years if confirmed, is married to billionaire heiress Jane Lauder, granddaughter of Estée Lauder and daughter of Republican donor Ronald Lauder. Is Warsh being evasive because he’s trying to dismiss those connections, or is it because he actually has assets connected to the notorious criminal?

President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday it would’ve taken him just five months to end a war he refused to fight in.

Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Trump bragged about how quickly he ended the war in Iran—shortly after threatening to resume attacks if things don’t go his way in the as-yet unstarted peace talks.

“And I just looked at a little chart, World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years. I’m five months. OK, five months,” Trump said. “I would have won Vietnam very quickly. I would have, if I were president, I would have won Iraq in the same amount of time that we won because, essentially, we won here.”

The U.S. formal involvement in the Vietnam War wasn’t actually 19 years long—it was more like eight. But how can one expect Trump to know something like that, when he wasn’t actually there? The president, son of a rich real estate mogul, evaded the military draft five times.

And anyway, Trump clearly has loose definitions for what actually constitutes a war. The president seems to believe war starts and ends when he says so, and then starts again and ends again, and so on ad infinitum.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doesn’t think soldiers living and fighting together in close quarters or aboard warships need to take the flu vaccine.

“Under the disastrous Biden administration, this Pentagon waged an unrelenting war on our warriors on many fronts, including when it came to denying them simple medical autonomy, and the freedom to express their religious convictions,” Hegseth said in a video statement posted on Tuesday morning. “Under President Trump … we’re seizing this moment to discard any absurd, overreaching mandates that only weaken our war fighting capabilities. In this case, this includes the universal flue vaccine, and the mandate behind it.”

The announcement was widely criticized by Democrats for the timing, the level of priority attached to it, and the obvious disregard for the history of influenza in the U.S. military. During World War I, an estimated 45,000 U.S. soldiers died from influenza. Now, Hegseth is proudly eschewing a vaccine that is known to be an effective way to avoid getting the flu—something servicemembers, especially those stationed on warships in the Middle East—would likely appreciate.  

“Nothing says military readiness like sick soldiers,” Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro said. 

This story has been updated.

President Trump is not exactly known for his piousness, but one Bible verse seems to have struck his fancy—probably because it was used by evangelical Christians to sing his praises while they tried to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021.

In the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 consists of God responding to a prayer from Solomon, a king of ancient Israel. God promises Solomon he will bless his temple as long as he and his people are not idolaters. As is common in the Old Testament, God’s message rings with both love and fury. But verse 14, the most famous bit of the passage, is positive: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

As part of a weeklong “America Reads the Bible” event organized by the White House and the election-denying evangelical group Christians Engaged, a prerecorded video of Trump reading 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 will air at 6 p.m. E.T. Tuesday evening. Remember the separation of church and state? That was nice.

Trump reading the passage will thrill what’s left of the January 6-ers. During the Capitol riot, Couy Griffin—the founder of “Cowboys for Trump,” a fan club that rode on horseback to Trump’s political events—recited verse 14 over the crowd.

According to the Christian Post, Trump’s association with the passage goes back even further, to 2016. After his unlikely election win, evangelist Anne Graham Lotz—Billy Graham’s daughter—used the verse to claim that God had responded to America’s prayers.

MS NOW opinion writer Ja’han Jones called it “predictably Trumpian” that the president is reciting a passage that his supporters have used to heap praise on him. As the passage is over 400 words long, The New Republic would also like to note that it will be interesting to see whether Trump gets bored halfway though and starts talking about something else.

The Southern Poverty Law Center revealed Tuesday that it’s under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for previously using paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

The nonprofit public interest group announced that the Trump administration appears to be preparing a case against the organization or some of its employees.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.

Fair said that the SPLC had used informants to monitor the threat of violence inside extremist organizations, and had frequently shared its findings with local and federal law enforcement.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The Montgomery-based SPLC was founded in 1971 in order to combat white supremacist groups after the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the nonprofit’s purview has been nationally perceived (at least on the right) as less and less acceptable, in the decades since. Conservative politicians and personalities have railed against the advocacy group, claiming that its work—which includes tracking extremist groups, promoting tolerance, and kneecapping bigotry through litigation—is inherently partisan and overly leftist.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced last year that his agency would sever ties with the SPLC, ending a long-standing research arrangement between the nonprofit and the federal government.

The investigation has reignited concerns that Donald Trump is trying to weaponize the Justice Department during his second term, morphing the agency into his personal law firm in order to harm or attack his dissidents and critics.