President Joe Biden appeared to forget on Thursday that he had met with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell just two years ago.
“I have never spoken to the Fed chairman since I took office,” Biden falsely stated in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington.
Biden met with Powell in the Oval Office in May 2022. It was the third in-person meeting between Powell and President Biden, according to Bloomberg. Biden nominated Powell for a second term as Fed chair in November 2021.
Biden's false statements were intended to contrast with Donald Trump's stance on the Fed, when he publicly criticized Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for raising interest rates in 2018. Trump was slammed by left-wing political commentators who said his criticism threatened to undermine the Fed's independence, but the Fed appeared to concede Trump's case the following year when it began cutting interest rates.
US President Joe Biden (R) looks on after announcing his nomination of Jerome Powell (L) to be Federal Reserve Chairman during an event at the White House in Washington, DC, on November 22, 2021. “He is the right person to lead us through the pandemic recovery and the fight against inflation,” President Joe Biden said on Monday as he nominated US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for a second term. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP) (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
“Unlike my predecessor, I Federal Reserve “In carrying out its mission to control inflation, the government has maintained its independence,” Biden said, “and that independence has served the country well.”
This is a misinterpretation of Trump's comments, which he said at the time were not an attempt to undermine the Fed's independence but were instead an expression of his own opinion.
“I'm not excited,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC. Joe Curnen. “Because when our rates go up, they try to raise them again. I'm really not happy about that. But at the same time, I'm letting them do what they think is best.”
The criticism of the Fed came in public, not in a private meeting as Biden's comments suggested.
