President Joe Biden on Thursday appeared to forget meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as recently as two years ago.
“I’ve never once spoken to the chairman of the Fed since I became president,” Biden said, falsely, in a speech at the Economic Club of Washington.
Biden met with Powell as recently as May 2022 in the Oval Office. This was Powell’s third in-person meeting with President Biden, according to Bloomberg. Biden nominated Powell to a second term as chair of the Fed in November 2021.
Biden’s false statement was meant to contrast his approach to the Fed with that of Donald Trump, who publicly criticized Fed chairman Jerome Powell for raising interest rates in 2018. Although Trump was lambasted by leftwing political pundits, who claimed the criticism threatened to undermine the independence of the Fed, the Fed appeared to concede Trump’s point the following year when it began cutting interest rates.
“Unlike my predecessor, I respect the Federal Reserve’s independence as they pursued a mandate to bring inflation down,” Biden said. “And that independence has served the country well.”
This was a false characterization of Trump’s remarks. Even at the time, Trump framed his remarks as expressing his opinion rather than an attempt to interfere with the independence of the Fed.
“I’m not thrilled,” Trump said in an interview CNBC’s Joe Kernen. “Because we go up and every time you go up they want to raise rates again. I don’t really — I am not happy about it. But at the same time I’m letting them do what they feel is best.”
The criticism of the Fed was done in public—not in a private meeting, as Biden’s remarks implied.
