Paul Krugman on Trump Attempting to Fire Fed’s Lisa Cook: ‘If I Cheated on My Third Grade Exam, Should I Be Fired from My Current Job?’

TAPPER: “Let’s bring in Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Paul, this is the first instance of a president attempting to fire a Fed governor in the history of the central bank. You wrote on your Substack: ‘The real story here isn’t about Lisa Cook or mortgages. It’s about the way the Trump Administration is weaponizing government against political opponents, critics, or anyone it finds inconvenient.’ The president, of course, is allowed to fire a Fed governor for cause. Do you not think allegations of mortgage fraud are cause enough to warrant dismissal?”

KRUGMAN: “Normally, for cause means that you’re not doing your job. You know, something — we have no evidence, really, that she did anything wrong. But anything that’s being raised pertains to, you know, back when she was a professor at Michigan State, not at the Fed. Normally, firing for cause means that you’re drinking on the job or you’re stealing office supplies or something like that. It’s something related to not doing the job, and there’s been no hint of that, nothing — no one is quite — even the Trump people aren’t trying to claim that she’s doing a bad job at the Fed, that she’s unqualified or behaving inappropriately. So, this is crazy. This is — if I cheated on my third grade exam, should I be fired from my current job? This is completely insane.”