Throughout recorded history, there have been epic clashes: Alexander the Great vs. Darius. Ali vs. Frazier. Coke vs. Pepsi. The Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote.
And then there’s Donald Trump vs. Jerome Powell, a match-up so lopsided it feels less like a battle than a Looney Tunes short: Rogue Idiot vs. Respected Thinker.
Without cause, Trump’s Justice Department is probing the chair of the Federal Reserve, looking for wrongdoing relating to the renovation of the Fed building in Washington, D.C. It’s a bunch of horse manure. Plain and simple. But Powell knows what this is really about, and he’s ready to fight.
In a remarkable and unprecedented rebuttal, Powell rightly observed: “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”
Eloquent, thoughtful, honest.
Here, in contrast, is how the dimwitted Trump lied and babbled about the investigation by his pet DOJ: “I don’t know anything about it, but he’s certainly not very good at the Fed, and he’s not very good at building buildings.”
Sure, he knows nothing about it. And is he implying he knows how to build buildings?
What’s outlandishly comical about this whole sordid spectacle is that it’s over renovations to the Federal Reserve’s headquarters … while Trump’s own career is littered with reckless renovations, abandoned buildings, serial bankruptcies, courtroom battles with unpaid contractors, screwed-over laborers, and a litany of embarrassments that for decades made him the laughingstock of New York real estate.
Trump is now putting that glaring lack of expertise on full display as he demolishes the East Wing of the White House to build a grotesque ballroom. If Trump is in charge, it will be a boondoggle: poorly managed, over-budget yet done on the cheap. Toothpicks and tape, slathered in fake gold.
Trump got off to a failing start, as he might say, having fired the first architect. It’s all downhill from here. And as Powell noted, he went through Congress for approval on all costs related to the Fed HQ. Trump bulldozed the East Wing with abandon.
And yet Trump fancies himself the arbiter of what a proper construction or renovation project should entail.
What Trump has demonstrated expertise in, meanwhile, is abject stupidity — and Jerome Powell is not a man easily outsmarted.
During a July 24, 2025 visit to Fed headquarters, Trump started hammering — pun lightly intended — Powell over what he claimed were skyrocketing renovation costs, while repeatedly pressing him to cut interest rates.
In a widely shared moment, Powell calmly corrected Trump’s figures, explaining he had lumped in a separate, already completed building — undercutting the president in front of reporters.
He made Trump look a fool. That isn’t terribly hard to do but from the composed, buttoned-down Powell, it was vintage.
Powell is a Princeton-trained economist, a veteran of public service and high finance, the steady-handed steward of the world’s most important central bank. Here’s how dim Trump is: in 2018, he himself appointed Powell, whose nomination was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate. Under Joe Biden, Powell was solidly confirmed for a second term.
He has served at the Fed through four administrations. He has earned praise from Republicans and Democrats. He has a working understanding of money, risk, leverage, and — most importantly — restraint. Attributes that have nothing to do with Donald Trump.
Powell has spent most of his career making decisions that affect global markets, inflation, employment, and stability, usually while trying very hard not to be the story himself. His measured, low-key approach is exactly what a tumultuous economy needs.
What it doesn’t need is a bombastic, indecisive, impulsive, senile nutjob, who understands none of what Powell has mastered.
This is a man who built casinos — hardly akin to a federal building or the White House — then watched them go bankrupt.
If this is a Looney Tunes cartoon, it’s Mr. Magoo trying to pick a fight with Mr. Peabody.
A refresher: Mr. Peabody is a genius who solves problems across time and space. Mr. Magoo is a near-blind man who stumbles through disasters, surviving by accident.
Trump has spent his adult life bumbling like Magoo while yearning for Peabody’s brilliance. Powell embodies such brilliance, and has never been seen as someone who stumbles or bumbles.
Trump publicly berates Powell for not cutting rates fast enough to juice Trump’s short-term political fortunes. Powell doesn’t budge. He doesn’t flatter Trump or shower him with gold. He doesn’t panic or cave. He does what central bankers are supposed to do. He weighs data, assesses risk, and resists pressure from politicians who want the economy burning on high.
In Trump’s world, that refusal is unforgivable.
To Trump, anyone who doesn’t submit must be corrupt, disloyal, or criminal. Institutions don’t serve the public. They serve him. So when Powell simply did his job, Trump took it as an insult.
Now comes the attempted retaliation. But Trump doesn’t understand that Powell is not afraid of buffoons. He has spent decades in rooms full of very smart people, making decisions under pressure.
Trump is trying to litigate macroeconomics with lies, fraud, and tomfoolery. Yet again, he doesn’t grasp the difference between intimidation and intelligence, insanity and insight, vengeance and validity. All the mistakes he’s made his whole life.
He is inventing criminality about a man about as far from a criminal as the Pope. Not only is this disgraceful and corrosive to democracy, it puts our economy at serious risk.
The irony is that Powell embodies the very thing Trump pretends to be: a “stable genius.”
Trump’s an idiot. End of story.
So good luck to Trump as he attempts to bully, outmaneuver, or discredit a man who actually understands how money works — and indeed the law. Good luck to Mr. Magoo as he squints at Mr. Peabody, who has his eyes wide open.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”
