Trump’s Latest Attack On Fed Chair Powell Involves A Beehive And A Rooftop Garden

President Donald Trump’s latest attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell have nothing to do with interest rates and instead focus on interior decorating.

A top White House official accused Powell of mismanaging the Federal Reserve System, citing cost overruns in a years-long renovation of the central bank’s Washington, D.C. headquarters. Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, criticized plans for the building’s renovation, which at one point included a beehive, a rooftop garden, and VIP dining rooms.

Last month, Powell told Senators at a hearing that those features were included in an out-of-date plan and were no longer being installed.

“The President is extremely troubled by your management of the Federal Reserve system,” Vought wrote in a letter to Powell posted on social media Thursday. “Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington, D.C. headquarters.”

Vought criticized Powell for overseeing the project, which he said was $700 million over budget and gave Powell seven business days to answer a series of questions about the overhaul. He also turned Powell’s Senate testimony against him, saying that if there had been major changes to the plans, he should have had them approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, a planning agency for federal buildings.

The letter came a day after Trump said that Powell should resign if he had deceived Congress over the renovations.

“Then he should resign immediately,” Trump said Tuesday at a Cabinet meeting. “We should get somebody in there that’s going to lower interest rates.”

The onslaught was the latest in a barrage of criticism from the White House for Powell. In recent months, Trump has lobbed insults at the Fed chief, calling him a “numbskull” and a “stupid person” among other things. Powell has defied his demands to lower the central bank’s key interest rate and insisted on the Fed’s independence from direct control of the president. The president appoints the Fed chair to serve a four-year term—Powell’s is up in 2026.

The Fed’s policy committee—the 12-member group led by Powell—has held its key interest rate steady at a higher-than-usual level since December, even as Trump has browbeaten Powell to lower it. A higher federal funds rate keeps upward pressure on interest rates for all kinds of loans. Fed officials have kept rates high in an effort to restrain borrowing and spending in hopes of pushing inflation down to the Fed’s goal of a 2% annual rate.

Although inflation has been relatively tame in recent months, Powell and other Fed officials have voiced concerns that Trump’s campaign of imposing tariffs on trading partners could push up consumer prices and stoke inflation, which lower interest rates would worsen.

For his part, Trump has said the high interest rates have cost the country billions because the fed funds rate influences borrowing costs on the ever-growing national debt.

Powell has said the Fed will make its monetary policy decisions based on its mission of keeping inflation low and employment high, not on political considerations. On Powell’s side are many members of Congress, who have defended the Fed’s independence.