President Donald Trump’s attempt to shame Federal Reserve Board of Governors chair Jerome Powell over the cost of a long-running renovation to the central bank’s Washington headquarters went horribly wrong on Thursday when Powell had a ready response for the president’s accusations during a tour of the construction site.
After viewing parts of the costly renovation, Trump and Powell stopped briefly to speak to reporters who’d traveled to the Federal Reserve headquarters with the president.
Trump said the cost of the years-long project was now “about $3.1 billion” rather than the $2.7 billion previously stated by Powell.
“So we’re taking a look, and it looks like it’s about 3.1 billion went up a little bit or a lot. So the 2.7 is now 3.1 it just came out,” he said reading from a piece of paper, as Powell looked on and shook his head in the negative before interjecting.
The chairman replied: “I haven’t heard that from anybody” and asked if the paper Trump was reading from came from the central bank.
At that point, Trump handed him the paper and continued talking while Powell pulled out his reading glasses to look.
He then told the president that the higher number he was claiming included a separate project that wasn’t part of the renovation at issue.
“You just added in a third building,” he said.
When Trump replied that the building in question was currently “being built,” Powell spoke up once more to disabuse the president of his misunderstanding of what he was reading.
He told Trump that he was mistakenly counting long-completed renovations to a building named for William Martin Jr., who served as Fed chair from 1951–1970, as part of the renovation of the Fed’s main headquarters.
“No, it’s been it was built five years ago. We finished Martin five years ago,” he said.
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