U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One upon departure for New York, in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
MS NOW analyst Steve Benen warns President Donald Trump’s latest ploy in his ongoing war against Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell now extends to “outlandish” lawsuit threats. But the legal basis of the president’s argument could become a colossal self-own in the U.S. court system if judges take Trump’s argument seriously.
Trump has pressed Powell to counter the damage of Trump’s onerous tariffs by lowering interest rates, and the more Powell disregards him, the angrier Trump gets.
“Indeed, the president has resorted to juvenile taunts and name-calling, publicly condemning Powell as, among many other things, a ‘moron’ for failing to follow the White House’s misguided demands,” said Benen.
Trump said he might also continue his impotent campaign to duck U.S. agency independence clauses and fire Powell, but it is Trump’s recent legal threat that Benen finds most laughable.
“Donald Trump has spent the first year of his second term whining more about Joe Biden than anyone else on earth, but … Powell is a close second,” said Benen. “… During a Mar-a-Lago press conference, standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump peddled familiar complaints, before concluding: ‘It’s gross incompetence against Powell. We’re going to probably bring a lawsuit against him.’”
Trump wrote in August that he was ‘considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed,’ and his press secretary insists that he’s ‘serious’ about it, said Benen, while adding that it’s “unlikely that he’ll follow through.”
“But I’m also curious about the implications of such an effort,” said Benen. “If litigants can file civil suits against government officials over perceived ‘gross incompetence,’ wouldn’t that lead to an avalanche of such cases?” said Benen. “Given Team Trump’s brazen and routine incompetence, it isn’t difficult to imagine the president and administration officials facing a whole lot of lawsuits along these lines if he were to open such a door.”
Read Benen's MS NOW column at this link.