Hi there, everyone. It's 4 o'clock in the east. Donald Trump playing with fire today

when it comes to the American economy, a one strong area for him politically that now sees some of his lowest approval marks ever in areas like inflation and tariffs,

as well as a majority of Americans now expressing anxiety about how

much things cost. So what does a politically vulnerable wannabe autocrat do? Well, he lunges for the

steering wheel with an unprecedented and likely illegal attempt to fire a member of the

Independent Federal Reserve Board of

Governors, Lisa Cook.

Here's economist Paul Krugman on the Rachel Maddo show last night, sounding the alarm.

This is a five alarm fire because it's not just about Lisa Cook.

It's clearly, as I said, on my substack, this is about intimidation.

This is saying, you know, it's a message not just, you know, he's not just that he's

claims he's firing Lisa Cook, although he doesn't, I'm not sure that he has the right to do

that, but it's a message to everybody else on the Fed's board and basically to government

officials of any kind that get in our way,

don't act as an obedient minion of Donald Trump, and we will ruin you.

We will destroy you.

If this stands, we immediately become a, we become Venezuela, we become Turkey, we become a place where all of this

stuff is just at the winds of the strong man in charge.

Now, Cook is the first black woman to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve.

She was appointed by President Joe Biden, and her term is not set to expire until 2038. She is one of

seven governors, and if Donald Trump succeeds in removing her, he will have appointed a majority

of the governors on the board, which would give him greater control over the country's central bank.

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