Pence Says Trump Has Right to Criticize Powell

Bloomberg's Molly Smith and Ira Jersey react to President Trump's latest attacks on Fed chair Jerome Powell and talk about the importance of the Fed's dual mandate.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Donald Trump had the right to publicly share his views about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and decision-making on interest rates — and that he had his own concerns about the central bank’s policies.

“I think the President of the United States is fully entitled to express his opinion about both the Fed chair and about the Federal Reserve itself,” Pence said in an interview Thursday on Bloomberg Television.

“I don’t really accept that the Federal Reserve should be a completely separate agency, you know, like a College of Cardinals that we never refer to other than in respectful hush tones,” Pence added. “The president ought to be able to express himself.”

Trump has been waging a relentless personal campaign against Powell, demanding that the Fed chair lower interest rates. Earlier this week Trump accused Powell, whom he has regularly derided with terms such as “stupid” and labeled “Too Late” on rates, as “whining like a baby about non-existent Inflation for months.”

Powell has said the Fed would probably be cutting rates by now, based on declining inflation, if not for the uncertain outlook for future prices due to Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda.

The president has said that Powell should “resign immediately” if allegations that the chair misled lawmakers about renovations at the bank’s headquarters proved true. Powell has acknowledged cost overruns in testimony to lawmakers, but called some media reports on the project, “flatly misleading.”

Trump has openly discussed dismissing the Fed chair. Last month, the president said he had three to four candidates in mind to replace Powell once his term as chair is up in May 2026. Trump has also said he would tap a successor who would want to cut interest rates. Such a move would strike at the heart of the central bank’s independence.

Pence on Thursday expressed his own misgivings about the Fed’s decision-making, noting that he has “long had great concerns about the dual mandate and the Federal Reserve,” referring to the bank’s twin goals of keeping prices stable and also fostering full employment.

“The Federal Reserve ought to just focus on the dollar. And I think that the hesitation that I have seen from the Fed chair and ostensibly the committee is that the uncertainty around these broad based tariffs and the potential for inflation has slowed their intention and their earlier efforts at lowering rates,” he added.

Narrowing the focus of the central bank has long been a priority for Pence, who when he served in Congress introduced legislation that would have removed the full-employment mandate and shifted the Fed’s focus to inflation alone.

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