CNN’s Abby Phillip Drops Video Receipt of Trump Side-by-Side Trashing Powell for Opposite Reasons

CNN anchor Abby Phillip hit President Donald Trump with a side-by-side video receipt trashing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for opposite reasons in two speeches a year apart at the same venue.

Trump has habitually attacked Powell and constantly pressured him to lower interest rates. Now, the Fed chair is facing an investigation over the renovation of Federal Reserve buildings and whether he lied to Congress about the project. The president trashed Powell anew during a speech to the Detroit Economic Club on Tuesday.

On Tuesday’s edition of CNN NewsNight, Phillip took a clip from that speech and compared it to one from October 2024. In the first, he trashed Powell for lowering interest rates and causing inflation. In the second, he derided the Fed chair for not raising interest rates due to inflation worries:

PHILLIP: We actually have — let me just pull it up because to your point, not to cut you off, but we have some of these stats that you’re just mentioning here. September 2024, and I’ll tell you why I’m showing September 2024 in a second. Inflation was at 2.4 percent. Today, it’s at 2.7 percent. Unemployment was at 4.1 percent. Today it’s at 4.4 percent. There were 254,000 jobs added in — a year ago.

Fifty thousand added in December. And the Fed cut rates then at 50 basis points. And in October, this is what Trump said about what the Federal Reserve was doing in terms of interest rates and compare it to what he’s saying right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The fact is that the Federal Reserve brought the interest rates down a little too quickly. It was too big a cut and everyone knows that was a political maneuver that they tried to do before the election, but they did the wrong thing. It was totally a political decision and inflation has started to rise.

We’re talking about the head of a Fed — of the Fed. And I want somebody that when the market is doing great, interest rates can go down. You have a good quarter and they want to kill it because they’re so petrified of inflation.

(END VIDO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So technically, Biden had better numbers. The Fed lowered interest rates. Trump thought it was a scheme, some kind of political scheme at the time.

Watch above via CNN NewsNight.