Trump Melts Down as Federal Reserve Defies Him on Interest Rates

President Trump had yet another predictable meltdown after his handpicked Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh refused to lower interest rates—instead raising them for the first time in three years.

“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year,” Trump wrote Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social. “The word ‘Deficit’ is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!”

Lower interest rates are something Trump has demanded since he returned to office.

The Federal Reserve unanimously voted to increase interest rates by .25 percent, bringing its flagship rate to between 3.75 and 4 percent.

Trump’s demand for lower interest rates clearly fell on deaf ears, as Warsh told reporters after his rate hike announcement that he had “nothing” on “the discussion with the president.”

While used to lower inflation, raising interest rates also makes it more expensive to borrow money—something millions of consumers will be affected by, and right before midterm elections in November.

The Trump administration is admitting that Trump’s proposed “Triumphal Arch” in Washington, D.C., will harm historical sites, but claiming it must be built anyway.

The Washington Post, citing a National Park Service document and email correspondence, reports that government officials fully acknowledge that the proposed arch, which would be built on the Memorial Circle traffic roundabout, would overshadow the nearby Arlington National Cemetery and have negative impacts on other historic sites, including the Lincoln Memorial.

The “adverse effects cannot be fully avoided,” an NPS document states, but there’s nowhere else that the arch can be built because “the proposed location at Memorial Circle is central to the undertaking.” The document is a proposed agreement that Trump officials want historical preservation organizations to sign as part of federal requirements.

“NPS recognizes that Memorial Circle is located within a highly sensitive historic and commemorative landscape and that the Undertaking’s location contributes to adverse effects to historic properties whose significance is associated with setting, design, feeling, association, spatial organization, circulation, and contributing views and vistas,” the document states.

The only remedies the White House is offering to these negative effects are new signs and web pages explaining the project to the public, managing construction so as not to interfere with burials at the cemetery, and documenting the surrounding landscape before beginning to build.

An email states that the NPS asked historical preservationists and other groups to review and sign the agreement by noon Monday, which would overcome legal hurdles and secure final approval for the arch. The White House hopes to submit the project to the National Capital Planning Commission for final approval as early as November.

Three veterans and an architectural historian have sued to stop the arch’s construction, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last week ordered the government to give 48 hours before breaking ground on the project, which the Trump administration is fighting. But considering that the White House just admitted that the underlying reason for the lawsuit is valid, the arch may be tied up in court for a while.

Postmaster General David Steiner wants out.

The United States Postal Service chief told individuals close to him that he wants to resign from his post, according to a report from Reuters on Wednesday. “The message was, this isn’t what he signed up for, and he didn’t come on board to get beat up like this,” one source said.

This report comes as President Trump has been attempting to use the supposedly independent mail service to do his bidding in his last-minute midterm election interference, commanding it to only deliver ballots if they had a unique barcode and if states handed over voter lists to the agency. The Supreme Court struck that dream down on Monday, just two days before reports of Steiner’s discontent.

USPS has denied the report, saying it has “absolutely zero ⁠validity.”

Steiner was apparently most discouraged after an intense Senate hearing earlier this summer in which he essentially admitted under oath that USPS would bend the knee to Trump’s attacks on vote-by-mail.

However, sources familiar with Steiner’s plans told Reuters his discontent stretched back even further. The White House was making efforts to assuage Steiner since the end of last year, with donors even setting him up on a golf outing with Trump on one of his properties in Florida in December.

“Give us another chance,” says Vice President JD Vance when asked about his midterm message to the American people.

The vice president joined the All-In podcast for a disastrous live interview Wednesday, during which he struggled to defend the Trump administration’s record on everything from the war in Iran to high rates of inflation.

“You promised that you wouldn’t start a foreign war. You promised that you wouldn’t start a foreign war in the Middle East, specifically,” co-host Jason Calacanis said. “Americans—specifically the people who voted for you, Mr. Vice President—are very upset about starting this war. What is your message to them?”

“We invite people into the coalition who disagree with us. You don’t have to agree with us on every single issue.” Vance responded, completely dodging the question. He failed to acknowledge Donald Trump’s repeated promises to stay out of the Middle East, including a pledge at the Republican National Convention two years ago: “With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don’t have wars,” Trump said at the time.

“Wanting to keep the United States out of foreign entanglements does not mean that you can never use the military in order to accomplish the American people’s objectives,” Vance continued. “I think the president has actually done the responsible thing here, which is to try to ensure that world energy markets, despite Iranian terrorism, continue to get that flow of oil and gas.”

That “flow,” Vance failed to mention, has resulted in the American people spending over $100 billion more at the gas pump since the war began seven months ago. (He also neglected to mention that oil was flowing just fine before Trump started his war of choice.)

“The alternative here, which is the United States effectively says to the Middle East, ‘You’re on your own,’ would mean necessarily a worldwide energy crisis,” Vance said, echoing his previous comments that Americans should be grateful gas prices aren’t higher.

The interview went even further off the rails when Vance was asked about his message to voters leading into the midterm elections this fall.

“Give us another couple of years,” Vance said. “Do you want to reelect the people who have made substantial progress, accepting there is still a lot of work to be done, or do you want to go back to the people who caused the problem in the first place?”

If Vance is trying to engender support for his historically unpopular party come November, “it could be worse” and “can we have redo?” are not exactly inspiring rallying cries.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Vance said.

Republicans appear to be listening to the White House rather than the president.

Conservatives seem to have completely dodged Donald Trump’s midterm advice since the Republican Midterm Convention last week, during which the president told his party to promise $5,000 government handouts and act as if he’s on the ballot.

An analysis of more than a million social media messages conducted by The Washington Post found that conservative candidates across the country have opted to stick with their own messages rather than further ingratiate themselves in Trump’s orbit.

Mentions of Trump by Republican candidates online have almost halved since January, dropping from mentions in 15 percent of posts to just 9 percent in September. Some hopeful office-seekers have even stripped their websites and campaign materials of Trump’s name, attempting to split themselves from the president’s sinking reputation.

That’s the advice that the White House offered in July, when staffers explicitly encouraged midterm-bound Republicans to break from Trump in an effort to save their election chances.

Republicans already had little to campaign on ahead of the November race, but one right-wing senator told Punchbowl Wednesday that Trump was “putting a noose around all of our necks” by continuing to escalate his trade wars so close to Election Day.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll published late last month suggested that the president’s influence is waning: Just 13 percent of Americans strongly approve of him—compared to 23 percent in a 2025 YouGov poll this time last year.

Top issues impacting Trump’s popularity include the seemingly endless Iran war, the rising cost of living, an economy and supply chain thrown out of whack by the president’s reckless tariffs, the cost of health care, and the encroachment of AI and the industry’s data centers in American communities—which Trump has unequivocally backed—a hot topic.

Republican attitudes toward Trump have also changed, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Just 35 percent of surveyed conservatives said they “strongly approved” of Trump’s job during his second term. In the same poll, 41 percent of registered voters said that they would vote for a Democratic candidate if the presidential election were conducted today.