Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) is leading the charge to warn President Donald Trump that his threats against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, which have brewed for weeks, would be a disaster, CNN's Phil Mattingly reported on Wednesday.
"Turning back to what Trump said today, that it's highly unlikely that he will fire Powell. That's a direct contrast with what you're reporting," said anchor Jake Tapper.
"Yeah, last night the president met in the Oval Office with a group of House Republicans over a cryptocurrency bill, where the issue came up," said Mattingly. "Look, the president's view on this is disdain for Powell, his disdain for where rates currently sit is not secret, nor is it subtle. But in the course of that conversation, I'm told that he polled the lawmakers that were present, whether or not he should fire Powell. Just about everybody there said the answer was yes. And he also referenced a piece of paper that he said was a draft removal letter of Powell."
More intriguing, Mattingly continued, "This morning, as reporting started coming out on this, the White House didn't knock it down. In fact, there were officials who were saying that it was likely he was headed in this direction. 30 minutes later and a significant market dip later, the president saying it's not on the table, repeating what he said for months. It's not something he's going to pursue at this moment, but he might if cause suddenly percolates in the future on that matter, on Trump, seeing the market dip, perhaps we assume that that might have been what motivated him and then saying, no, I'm not considering right now."
On that note, Mattingly played a clip of Kennedy, whose warnings were in stark contrast to the House Republicans Trump met with: "If you fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you will see the stock market crash and you will see the bond market crash."
"Based on, I think, a very significant catalog of economic research, countries who have a central bank that is not viewed as independent typically do not end up in a good place," Mattingly added. "In fact, there's a great quote from Kennedy a couple of weeks ago where he said, 'generally speaking, their Powerball jackpot is 287 chickens and a goat,' as in, the economy is not great there."
Watch the video below or at the link here.