Rupert Murdoch’s flagship business newspaper has attacked Donald Trump for his “self-destructive” hate campaign against the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Opening with the scornful line “There he goes again,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board took aim at Trump’s renewed threat to fire Jerome Powell, 73, whom Trump himself appointed in 2017 before Joe Biden reappointed him.
During a Fox Business interview on Wednesday, Trump had declared he would “have to fire him” if Powell did not step aside when his term as chairman expires on May 15. “I’ve wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial,” the 79-year-old president added.
The Journal’s response was also mocking of Trump, stating simply: “Who knew?”
The Journal’s editorial board has emerged as one of the most consistent institutional critics of the president throughout his second term, having previously described his war on the Fed as “lawfare for dummies.”
Thursday’s editorial, headlined “Trump and His Federal Reserve Vendetta,” comes just two days after a federal judge threw out Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the paper, its parent company News Corp, and Murdoch himself. Trump has vowed to refile it.
The editorial accused the administration of manufacturing a criminal investigation “with no evidence of criminal wrongdoing” over renovation cost overruns at the Fed’s Washington headquarters, a campaign the paper says was designed to bully Powell into resignation.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro—a Fox News personality whom Trump appointed to the role—sent federal investigators to inspect the Fed’s construction site in the capital on Tuesday. “Is all this really a good use of DOJ resources?” the board asked.
The smarter play, the Journal argued, would be to leave Powell alone and focus on confirming Trump’s chosen successor, Kevin Warsh, 56.
That path is now complicated by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who serves on the Senate Banking Committee reviewing Warsh’s nomination and has pledged to withhold his vote—scheduled for a hearing next week—unless the administration drops its Powell probe.
Without Tillis, Republicans’ 13-11 majority on the committee evaporates. Even Trump appeared to acknowledge the bind. “I know he said what he said, and maybe it’s true, in which case I’ll have to live with it,” the president said of Tillis in the Fox Business interview.
The board also torched the administration’s use of “incompetence”—Trump’s own description of Powell—as a pretext for a potential firing, noting that Trump’s East Wing ballroom renovation is running over its own initial budget projections. “Is that a sign of Presidential incompetence?” the editorial asked.
The Journal’s final verdict was blunt: “The best way to replace Mr. Powell is to drop the pretextual Justice investigation and get Mr. Warsh confirmed. Why is this so hard for the President to understand?”
Wednesday’s editorial adds a fresh dimension to one of D.C.’s most complicated media relationships. Murdoch attended Trump’s inauguration in January and was praised by the president as “an amazing guy” as recently as February. But their relationship has been turbulent for years.
Author Michael Wolff reported that Murdoch privately called Trump a “f---ing idiot” during the first-term transition, and documents released during the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case revealed that Murdoch wrote that Trump’s post-Jan. 6 conduct was “pretty much a crime.”
After Trump filed his defamation suit last July—over the Journal’s reporting on a sexually suggestive birthday letter allegedly bearing his signature that was compiled for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday album, which Trump denies he wrote—the White House briefly expelled the paper from the presidential press pool.
Obama appointee Judge Darrin P. Gayles dismissed the suit on Monday, ruling the complaint “comes nowhere close” to meeting the actual malice standard required for a public figure’s defamation claim—though he gave Trump until April 27 to file an amended complaint.
Spokesman Kush Desai said the White House was focused on working with the Senate to swiftly confirm Kevin Warsh as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.
“Warsh’s academic credentials, private sector success, and prior experience on the Fed Board of Governors make him eminently qualified to restore confidence and competence in Fed decision-making,” he said.
