# Trump vs The Fed: How Political Pressure on Jerome Powell Could Shake the Markets

An episode of [Earn Your Leisure](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1450211392), 14 Jan 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8dbc4f54-a337-4481-9ef2-b355012b0a3d/929fb9a5-66e1-4476-a095-b3d2013a2146/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=eac4c628-29cb-469a-b5c8-b355012b0a48

In this revealing Market Mondays clip, Rashad Bilal, Ian Dunlap, and Troy Millings dive deep into the unprecedented Justice Department investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at the direction of Donald Trump. With the market watching closely, the trio explores how politicizing the Fed could threaten its longstanding autonomy and set a dangerous precedent for America’s financial stability. Rashad highlights the seriousness of the Fed potentially losing its independence and becoming subject to presidential influence, emphasizing that Trump is not a traditional president and is aggressively consolidating power. Ian points out that the way Trump operates—allegedly using punitive measures against those who don’t comply—mirrors tactics seen in less democratic governments, raising alarms about the long-term impact on the economy and markets. Troy provides insight into Powell’s actual record, noting that Powell led the charge on recent interest rate cuts and managed the pandemic recovery strategically, yet is now facing political retaliation for not moving quickly enough to meet presidential demands. The hosts analyze how Powell's possible indictment—something never before seen in American history—may undermine confidence in future Fed chairs, making them vulnerable to political pressure instead of focusing on serving the public good. They also examine how this move fits into the larger context of Project 2025, designed to consolidate executive power across U.S. institutions. From the recent resilience of the stock market despite political turmoil, to the deeper questions about democracy, legacy, and financial policy, this discussion unpacks the real risks investors and citizens face when the independence of critical economic institutions is threatened. Will these actions cause a market crash or a slow erosion of trust in America’s financial system? Is this the beginning of long-term instability or just another political skirmish? Don’t miss this essential conversation for anyone concerned about the intersection of politics, economics, and market moves. *Timestamps:* • Trump’s DOJ investigates Fed Chair Jerome Powell • Why Fed independence matters • Will this impact the stock market and economy? • Project 2025 and executive power consolidation • How Jerome Powell managed rate cuts and market recovery • Predictions for the market in the second half of the year --- #MarketMondays #JeromePowell #FederalReserve #DonaldTrump #StockMarket #Economy #Project2025 #Investing #Finance #FinancialNews #EconomicPolicy #MarketAnalysis Subscribe for valuable insights on business, investing, and the biggest financial stories shaping our world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
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[0:39] Speaker 1: National Association Member FDIC.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Donald Trump in his Justice Department, they are investigating the
[0:49] Speaker 2: Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Chief Chair Jerome pal
[0:56] Speaker 2: And that's something that is pretty unprecedented, at least that's
[1:00] Speaker 2: what Jerome.
[1:01] Speaker 3: Had to say about it.
[1:02] Speaker 2: He said that, paraphrasing, he said that this is this
[1:07] Speaker 2: is because the refusal of the Fed dropping interest rates
[1:12] Speaker 2: and the refusal of the Fed, you know, bowing to
[1:17] Speaker 2: Donald Trump's demand.
[1:19] Speaker 1: Right, the threat of criminal charges is a consequence of
[1:23] Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best
[1:26] Speaker 1: assessment of what would serve the public, rather than following
[1:30] Speaker 1: the preference of the president.
[1:34] Speaker 3: This is where we're at. This is where we're at. Yeah,
[1:39] Speaker 3: So long story short.
[1:41] Speaker 2: He said that on Friday they they served them with
[1:47] Speaker 2: the investigation notification and he said that he will not
[1:51] Speaker 2: back down, and that is it's dangerous waters when the
[1:58] Speaker 2: FED loses its autonomy and becomes political, because the Federal
[2:02] Speaker 2: Reserve is not designed to become political. It's not designed
[2:07] Speaker 2: to answer to politicians, even the president. But Donald Trump
[2:12] Speaker 2: is not a traditional politician or a traditional president by
[2:16] Speaker 2: any means. And even at the last FED share she
[2:19] Speaker 2: spoke about this and she said that it sais a
[2:22] Speaker 2: very dangerous president. It's extremely bad, extremely bad for the
[2:26] Speaker 2: market and something that you know needs to really be monitored. So,
[2:34] Speaker 2: what are the thoughts on this billet, the impact the
[2:38] Speaker 2: stock market, the greater impact for the economy. What's the
[2:43] Speaker 2: overall thoughts on the president putting almost criminal charges. It
[2:50] Speaker 2: looks like on one of the most powerful people in
[2:53] Speaker 2: the world.
[2:53] Speaker 1: We got to say alleged because he said he had
[2:56] Speaker 1: no idea that it happened.
[2:59] Speaker 4: Wow, not surprised, and Legal called him Brighten earlier this morning,
[3:06] Speaker 4: Well when this first happened, and Rashat you pointed this
[3:09] Speaker 4: out when they had that meeting up the construction site.
[3:13] Speaker 4: He's going to be vindictive because he doesn't need anyone
[3:15] Speaker 4: to uncover how tumultuous our economic landscape is. Like I
[3:22] Speaker 4: was talking about this on stock Club and we've talked
[3:24] Speaker 4: about it on a show him privately, But how bad
[3:27] Speaker 4: do things have to be for a country? In order
[3:30] Speaker 4: for you to move up the GDP from one percent
[3:33] Speaker 4: to potentially five you had to form a coup in
[3:37] Speaker 4: Venezuela to get resources. So the way he's running this
[3:42] Speaker 4: is like a mob boss allegedly, and any enemy combatant
[3:48] Speaker 4: to the story is going to be punished. And it's
[3:51] Speaker 4: the reason why this is so important because they don't
[3:53] Speaker 4: want the election.
[3:54] Speaker 3: To turn.
[3:57] Speaker 4: This year and with JD. Van running, I think it's
[4:02] Speaker 4: a terrible precedent. And also the Federal Reserve is a
[4:05] Speaker 4: private entity, so if they begin to push back and
[4:08] Speaker 4: higher powers that be begin to push back on him,
[4:11] Speaker 4: I don't think it would be great for our economy.
[4:16] Speaker 4: A mistake and opposed to fixing the core problem, being
[4:19] Speaker 4: punitive towards the chair because he didn't do what you
[4:22] Speaker 4: want is a grand mistake. What do you guys think?
[4:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean when we saw Duvin Knight, it was
[4:29] Speaker 1: just like yo, it made me think about July in
[4:32] Speaker 1: that meeting when he talked about the overspending uh and
[4:36] Speaker 1: you know, Jerome kind of embarrassed him a little bit there.
[4:39] Speaker 1: You know, he's a vindictive guy. He's a guy that
[4:40] Speaker 1: doesn't forgot things, and he's gonna, you know, try his
[4:43] Speaker 1: best to make sure that he gets his way, and
[4:45] Speaker 1: anybody that gets in that way there's going to be
[4:48] Speaker 1: consequences with I think it's that's a terrible precedent, right,
[4:51] Speaker 1: even if I mean to indict the FED chair and
[4:55] Speaker 1: subpoena him is just like it's pretty I mean, it's
[4:58] Speaker 1: never had a war you learn on a drug warlord? Yeah,
[5:04] Speaker 1: But what it was to say about he is the
[5:07] Speaker 1: FED chair. He has two seats, right, he's also the
[5:09] Speaker 1: governor of the FED. So when he leaves in May,
[5:13] Speaker 1: you know, when his time is up, you still have
[5:15] Speaker 1: to put some money in his place. What does it
[5:17] Speaker 1: say about the next person that goes into that seat, right, Like,
[5:20] Speaker 1: are you going in there with no influence, right, Or
[5:24] Speaker 1: are you going in there because you've been hand selected
[5:27] Speaker 1: because you know that the president's influence will be listened
[5:30] Speaker 1: to and you will act on some of the things
[5:33] Speaker 1: that he's asked for. Right, he's been saying that we
[5:35] Speaker 1: need to lower rates. It's funny because we had three
[5:39] Speaker 1: rate lowering happening during twenty twenty five.
[5:42] Speaker 3: Right.
[5:43] Speaker 1: That wasn't even expected, right.
[5:45] Speaker 4: Surprisingly, Yeah, I was gonna say that.
[5:47] Speaker 1: Coming out of twenty twenty five, it was like we
[5:48] Speaker 1: might get two cuts, maybe one.
[5:51] Speaker 3: We got three.
[5:51] Speaker 1: And if you look at the minutes from all those meetings,
[5:54] Speaker 1: the person who was fighting for those rate cuts was
[5:57] Speaker 1: Jarron Powell. He was a guy that was actually fighting
[6:01] Speaker 1: inside those means to make sure that we had three
[6:03] Speaker 1: rate cuts to attack them because you wanted more. It's ridiculous. Now,
[6:09] Speaker 1: what does it say for the market. It's interesting, man,
[6:12] Speaker 1: you think about the past week, Like you said, Venezuela,
[6:15] Speaker 1: you're talking about institutions can't buy single homes anymore. You're
[6:19] Speaker 1: talking about having a freeze on interest rates at ten
[6:23] Speaker 1: percent for credit cards. All these things that are happening
[6:26] Speaker 1: in let's say a ten day span. Typically this crash
[6:32] Speaker 1: is a market yep, but here we are resilient still, right,
[6:37] Speaker 1: Like we didn't see a thousand point drop or five
[6:40] Speaker 1: hundred point drop. The Dow opened down three hundred. It
[6:43] Speaker 1: was like, okay, there's gonna be some ramifications from an
[6:45] Speaker 1: indictment from the FED chair. But I mean it wasn't
[6:49] Speaker 1: something that's right, It's just it's so it's very interesting.
[6:53] Speaker 3: Man, risk is.
[6:54] Speaker 4: Back on and no one cares about the long term
[6:56] Speaker 4: ramifications even with him one and more interest rates cuts.
[7:00] Speaker 4: It reminds me of Er five with the banking and
[7:03] Speaker 4: subprime crisis. Everyone's thinking short term. And to be very clear,
[7:08] Speaker 4: even with this point with the FED chair, he wants
[7:12] Speaker 4: to do what he needs to do so his legacy
[7:14] Speaker 4: is intact. When he leaves office, he's not thinking about
[7:16] Speaker 4: the betterment of the country at all.
[7:20] Speaker 1: So right, I feel like that's been the consensus we've
[7:25] Speaker 1: seen that over. I think he's going to be it'll
[7:27] Speaker 1: be a year on the twenty first, right since he
[7:29] Speaker 1: was sworn in as president when he's thinking about his legacy.
[7:32] Speaker 1: From day one, he's thinking about his legacy, whether it
[7:35] Speaker 1: was from policy, whether it was naming buildings after himself,
[7:38] Speaker 1: it's all been about his legacy, and it's gonntinue to
[7:41] Speaker 1: continue to be that, including the fetcher that you know
[7:44] Speaker 1: that he'll pick.
[7:45] Speaker 3: Well, the crazy thing is that he picked he picked
[7:47] Speaker 3: your own power. True.
[7:49] Speaker 4: So well, some people would say that that was a
[7:55] Speaker 4: forced pick. That wasn't his true pick that he wanted.
[7:59] Speaker 4: That's who he could have selected at the time, allegedly.
[8:05] Speaker 2: I mean, but it's under his it's under his legacy.
[8:09] Speaker 2: Gotta he got a chance to pick that. The FED
[8:11] Speaker 2: shair he picked your own power. Okay, he don't like him,
[8:13] Speaker 2: so he definitely wants he has who he wants to
[8:16] Speaker 2: be the next FED chair and I think that he's
[8:22] Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five.
[8:24] Speaker 3: As far as the consolidation of power.
[8:27] Speaker 2: And one of the main things that makes the American
[8:31] Speaker 2: quote unquote democracy different from a you know, monarchy or
[8:35] Speaker 2: tutarian type stat is that there's different branches of government
[8:39] Speaker 2: have different powers, and some branches actually are independent of
[8:43] Speaker 2: the government, like the Federal Reserve, where in the traditional
[8:46] Speaker 2: you know, kingdom, the king has pretty much a saying
[8:50] Speaker 2: anything that happens from the military to the federal Reserve
[8:53] Speaker 2: system to you name it. And one of the things
[8:58] Speaker 2: is everybody who probably twenty twenty five was talking about
[9:00] Speaker 2: the civil rights aspects, and that's important, but one of
[9:02] Speaker 2: the main themes in Project twenty twenty five was to
[9:05] Speaker 2: consolidate power power yep, and that's what he's doing. He
[9:09] Speaker 2: did it with the Justice Department and now he's doing
[9:13] Speaker 2: it with the Federal Reserve. As far as to really
[9:15] Speaker 2: be aggressive and pretty much saying like, if you don't
[9:19] Speaker 2: do what I'm gonna what I want you to do
[9:20] Speaker 2: is gonna be you know, extreme consequences for that, and
[9:23] Speaker 2: try to force force a new Federal Reserve chair in.
[9:28] Speaker 2: It's pretty unprecedent. I think it's ever actually been happened before.
[9:32] Speaker 2: So it's unprecedented times that we're living in. But it's
[9:36] Speaker 2: not surprising if you really, you know, studied the playbook
[9:40] Speaker 2: that they said they were gonna do.
[9:42] Speaker 3: It's not a secret. We're all denied.
[9:45] Speaker 4: Remember I remember when you first started posting it and
[9:48] Speaker 4: everyone was like, oh, this is fake. And all of
[9:51] Speaker 4: them are quiet, even in the Minneapolis issue. And we'll
[9:53] Speaker 4: talk about that on Blackout, but everyone's quiet. Who said
[9:57] Speaker 4: Project twenty twenty five was fake almost following it line
[10:01] Speaker 4: by line.
[10:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's either your negligent about it or
[10:06] Speaker 1: complicit with it, right, Like it's either or Like if
[10:09] Speaker 1: you required that means all right, well it's happening, and
[10:11] Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, they said it would, but it's.
[10:16] Speaker 3: It's just is it surprising? I don't. I don't.
[10:19] Speaker 1: I don't feel like it's surprising, right, Like even from
[10:22] Speaker 1: the world of investing, right, like when you're talking about
[10:25] Speaker 1: lowering interest rates, Yeah, that help stocks out for sure?
[10:28] Speaker 1: Does it help tech companies one hundred percent? But even
[10:32] Speaker 1: you know, thinking about it's like the way that Powell
[10:35] Speaker 1: did it was very strategic. Like he came out of
[10:38] Speaker 1: a pandemic, right, there was all talks of recession. We
[10:41] Speaker 1: actually went into a recession. We had a bull market,
[10:44] Speaker 1: a bear market, we had all these things.
[10:46] Speaker 3: It was a soft landing.
[10:47] Speaker 1: There was stagflation, it was inflation.
[10:50] Speaker 3: We still managed all of that.
[10:52] Speaker 1: Like, I feel like that the tarnishing of his legacy
[10:55] Speaker 1: is well with with what he's trying to do.
[10:57] Speaker 4: But I mean, the proof speaks for itself, right, you
[11:00] Speaker 4: can't argue with his plan. That's the job most people
[11:04] Speaker 4: wouldn't want. I wouldn't want it. He I think he
[11:06] Speaker 4: managed that incredibly well. Give him the disaster that was
[11:10] Speaker 4: put on his plate and then to try and railroad
[11:13] Speaker 4: him now because of a personal vendetta when he helped
[11:16] Speaker 4: save you is insane.
[11:19] Speaker 1: He actually did the thing you wanted, he just didn't
[11:22] Speaker 1: do it. That's frequently.
[11:23] Speaker 2: So from a stock market standpoint, like I said the
[11:26] Speaker 2: last FED chair, she said that this is going to
[11:28] Speaker 2: have a negative impact on the market, maybe not in
[11:31] Speaker 2: the week, but long term.
[11:34] Speaker 3: So is this going to be bad for the stock market?
[11:39] Speaker 4: As I stated last week, I think the first half
[11:41] Speaker 4: of the year would be great. Around the time we
[11:43] Speaker 4: get a lovely cover for invest Fest, get your ticks
[11:47] Speaker 4: to invest Fest. Around that invest Fest time, oh, we're
[11:50] Speaker 4: going to see some turbulence and that's the best time
[11:53] Speaker 4: for you to be there, for me to be able
[11:54] Speaker 4: to guide you on what to do. But the second
[11:57] Speaker 4: half of the year is going to be trouble. And
[11:59] Speaker 4: if we're they're talking about taking Greenland, the talks of Columbia,
[12:03] Speaker 4: Nigeria and Cuba are picking up. The valuations of stocks
[12:09] Speaker 4: are erodent in some sectors. There aren't as many GDP
[12:13] Speaker 4: movers and even in the collaboration, we'll talk about Lily
[12:17] Speaker 4: and Nvidiolator, Apple and Google. Usually when companies are coming
[12:22] Speaker 4: together for these deep partnerships, it's to prevent from treeods
[12:26] Speaker 4: from happening, and they're building a moat together. So the
[12:30] Speaker 4: second half of the year is going to be incredibly tough.
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