Trump Praises Fed Chair Warsh, Says Other Board Members Have 'Bad Intentions' on Rates

President Trump can't help himself when it comes to the Federal Reserve. Even with his own pick running the place, he's still trashing the board.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One Monday, Trump praised Fed Chair Kevin Warsh as "fantastic" but took a shot at the rest of the Board of Governors. "He's got a board, and the board members are very political, I would say," Trump said, according to CNBC. "He wants to do the right thing. I know what he wants to do."

Trump went further, accusing unnamed board members of "bad intentions" for resisting rate cuts. "You need the consent of some people that have perhaps bad intentions," he said. His ask hasn't changed: he wants rates low enough to juice GDP growth to 8%, 9%, even 12% annualized, and he wants America to have the lowest interest rates in the world, like three decades ago, according to CNBC and NAMPA's reporting on the same remarks.

Inflation is running above 4%, according to Crypto Briefing. That's double the Fed's 2% target. Slashing rates aggressively into that kind of inflation isn't a neutral move. It's a bet that price stability doesn't matter as much as growth. Reasonable people can disagree on that trade-off, but pretending there's no trade-off is not honest.

Who Warsh Actually Is

Trump nominated Warsh on March 4, 2026, and Warsh was sworn in May 22, 2026, replacing Jerome Powell, according to Crypto Briefing. This is not some holdover Trump inherited. Warsh is Trump's guy, through and through.

And yet at his very first meeting as chair, on June 17, 2026, the Fed held rates steady at 3.5%-3.75%, per Crypto Briefing. Warsh has publicly said he's committed to getting inflation back to the Fed's 2% target. So even the chair Trump installed isn't rubber-stamping the cuts Trump wants, at least not yet.

The Hawks Have a Point

Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, a voting FOMC member this year, has been the most direct pushback. She said benchmark rates should be "modestly higher," not lower, according to CNBC. Several other Fed officials have raised similar concerns about persistently high inflation, per CNBC's reporting.

If inflation is stuck above 4%, cutting rates aggressively risks re-igniting it, undermining the very credibility a central bank needs to keep long-term borrowing costs low in the first place. The Fed's dual mandate covers both price stability and employment. Trump's framing treats the growth half of that mandate as the only one that counts.

Where does the U.S. actually stand versus the rest of the world? The Fed's 3.5%-3.75% range is basically identical to the Bank of England's 3.5%-3.75%, according to both CNBC and briefs.co. It's higher than the European Central Bank's 2.25%, Japan's 1%, and China's 3%. So Trump's claim that the U.S. should have the world's lowest rate is aspirational, not descriptive. Right now America is roughly tied with Britain and well above Japan, the ECB, and China.

The Fed did cut rates by three-quarters of a percentage point total during the second half of 2025, according to both CNBC and briefs.co, so it's not like the board has been standing pat all year. It moved, then paused once Warsh took over and inflation stayed hot.

What Comes Next

The FOMC's next rate decision is set for this week, two days after Trump's Monday comments. Markets are pricing in a strong likelihood the Fed holds steady again, with the CME Group's FedWatch tool showing roughly a 1-in-3 chance officials instead vote for a quarter-point hike, according to CNBC. Nobody is currently pricing in the cut Trump wants.

Crypto Briefing noted that Bitcoin dropped to about $64,800 after the Fed's June 17 hold before stabilizing near $65,300, evidence that markets are already parsing Warsh's independence, or lack of it, in real time. Some economists cited by Crypto Briefing are speculating Warsh could eventually oversee cuts totaling up to 100 basis points over 2026, bringing the target range to 2.5%-2.75%, though that's speculation, not a Fed commitment.

Does Warsh, a man Trump personally nominated and who owes his job to the president's demand for lower rates, hold the line on 2% inflation, or does he eventually bend? His first decision was a hold. His next one, due this week, will tell us a lot more about whether the Fed's independence survives having a chair picked explicitly for his rate-cutting sympathies.