Fox doesn’t want its viewers to think anyone in government ever does anything for the good of the country.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell explained to Fox Business correspondent Ed Lawrence that today’s half-point interest rate cut was done as part of his job to help the U.S. economy, not the  Kamala Harris campaign.

Media Matters caught Lawrence “asking” Powell, "How do you respond to the criticism that will likely come that a deeper rate cut now before the election has some political motivations?"

Powell replied that it’s his fourth presidential election at the Fed and that the decision is always made the same way.

POWELL: [W]e're always going into this meeting in particular and asking what's the right thing to do for the people we serve. And we do that, and we make a decision as a group, and then we announce it. And that's always what it is, it's never about anything else. Nothing else is discussed. …

Our job is to support the economy on behalf of the American people. If we get it right, this will benefit the American people significantly. So, this really concentrates the mind. And, you know, it's something we all take very, very seriously. We don't put up any other filters. I think if you start doing that, I don't know where you stop. And so we just don't do that.

Of course, if the rate cut was viewed as favorable to Donald Trump, Fox would have been fine with that. Last month, Media Matters reported that Trump allies, led by Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, were trying to bully the Federal Reserve out of cutting interest rates – in order to help the network’s fave felon. Included with that article was the information that when he was in the White House, Trump tried to get the Federal Reserve to make its decisions in accordance with what benefitted him:

The Fed is an independent agency and presidents traditionally do not interfere with its interest rate decisions. Trump broke with that tradition during his presidency as he appeared to sour on the independence of his own appointed chairman, Powell. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “beginning in the 1990s, presidents avoided publicly complaining about the Fed,” but as Trump’s “trade war unsettled markets, he steadily berated the Fed chair and called for lower rates.” The Journal also reported that “Biden has mostly avoided discussing Fed policy, reverting to pre-Trump tradition.” (Biden re-appointed Powell to run the nonpartisan central bank for a second term in late 2021.) Additionally, Forbes reported that according to former Trump Cabinet official Wilbur Ross’ upcoming memoir, in 2018, “Trump demanded his Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, call the chair of the Federal Reserve … and demand that he cut interest rates.”

You can watch Lawrence demonstrate that there’s not much difference between “reporting” and propaganda at Fox below, from the September 18, 2024, Federal Open Market Committee press conference, via Media Matters.