Donald Trump has made no effort to hide his desperate wish that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell would resign, and according to some in far-right circles, the president got his wish on Tuesday, as a fake resignation letter from the Trump-appointed Fed chair made the rounds.
Most of those who fell for the obviously bogus letter were assorted activists, influencers and media personalities, but as The New Republic noted, they were joined by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.
Among other eyebrow-raising details, the letter includes an abundance of end-of-line hyphens, as well as punctuation errors … and an awkward line break causing an apostrophe-s to appear alone at the beginning of a new line. Most egregiously, the words encircling the seal of the Federal Reserve System at the bottom of the letter are largely gibberish — ridden with the glitchy characters one often finds in AI-generated images containing text.
Whoever created the fake resignation letter didn’t invest a lot of time in making it appear authentic. The wording on the Federal Reserve seal included the words, “Elerebal Reserve Oedo of Goveryaeb,” whatever that means.
And yet, there was the senior GOP senator from the great state of Utah promoting the fake document via social media alongside text that read, “Powell’s out!”
Powell was not, in fact, out.
Lee soon after deleted his tweet and told reporters, “I don’t know whether it’s legit or not.”
Of course, that led to a related question that he didn’t address: If the Utahn didn’t know whether the fake document was legitimate or not, why did he present it to the public as though it were real?
But stepping back, the problem isn’t just that the senator amplified misinformation. The bigger problem is that Lee keeps amplifying misinformation.
Indeed, it was just five weeks ago when the Republican senator generated a national controversy and widespread pushback after he promoted misinformation in the immediate aftermath of deadly shootings in Minnesota. Before that, Lee promoted misinformation about Jimmy Carter’s death. And about Hurricane Helene. And about U.S. border security. And about the CIA. And about Joe Biden’s health. The Washington Post’s Benjy Sarlin joked this week, “I feel like I could walk up to Mike Lee and tell him I’m a space alien and he’d consider it for a good five minutes at least.” Many have fallen for misinformation once or twice, but with Lee — who’s been a senator now for 14 years — he appears incapable of learning from instances in which his judgment has failed him. Every time he amplifies obvious nonsense, it’s tempting to think, “Well, he won’t make that mistake again” — except he invariably does make that mistake again. Ideally, Lee would act like a United States senator, but if that’s asking too much, the Utah Republican could at least try acting like a functioning adult with a modicum of critical thinking skills.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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