The man Donald Trump wants to install on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors has offered backhanded compliments to himself ahead of his expected move.
“I’m never going to claim to be the smartest person in the room,” Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Wall Street Journal. “I’m happy to be the most annoying person in the room.”
The comments appeared in a Journal profile charting Miran’s rise from a failed investment firm to the verge of landing one of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. central bank. Miran said his rise can be attributed to asking “forbidden questions” to avoid groupthink.
Critics warn Miran would effectively act as Trump’s proxy at the Fed if he gets the nod.
The Senate is set to vote on Monday on Miran’s confirmation to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, with the timing highly strategic.
If approved, he’ll be able to attend the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) two-day meeting beginning Tuesday, where officials will debate whether to cut interest rates.
The president has led a months-long demand that Fed Chair Jerome Powell slash rates.
The fears around Miran are heightened because he will not officially be leaving his White House role to join the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Instead, he will be taking a leave of absence. If confirmed, Miran will be seeing out the remainder of the term of former governor Adriana Kugler, who resigned Aug. 8 ahead of her term naturally ending in January 2026.
“By staying on CEA—even with a leave of absence—it’s a pretty good signal that he would just be willing to push for what the president wants,” Carola Binder, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Journal.
While Miran’s term could last only months, Trump has floated him as a possible replacement for under-fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, whose term ends in 2038, but whom Trump is trying to force out over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud, according to the Journal. Some also see Miran as a long-shot candidate to replace Powell when his term as Fed chair expires in May.
The WSJ’s editorial board blasted Trump’s lap dog being named to the non-partisan Federal Reserve Board of Governors while still holding a role in the executive branch as a potentially dangerous precedent.
“If Mr. Miran votes on the FOMC in a way Mr. Trump dislikes, he will put his job in the White House at risk,” the board wrote on Sunday. “If confirmed, he would only be a single vote among 12 on the current FOMC, but everyone knows he will be speaking for, and answering to, the president.”
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai dismissed the criticism, telling the Daily Beast, “One of many glaring factual errors by The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is the claim that Stephen Miran will ‘still be a White House economic adviser’ while serving on the Fed—despite the fact that Dr. Miran will be taking an unpaid leave of absence, have no White House email access, lose his White House badge, and not provide any advisory guidance as part of CEA in any way.
“The plain reality is that Dr. Stephen Miran is eminently qualified to serve on the Fed, and he will do so in compliance with the law.”
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