GOP Senator Falls For Powell’s Fake Resignation Letter

An obviously fake image purporting to show Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s resignation letter circulated in MAGA circles on X recently, with Republican Senator Mike Lee among those fooled. Robert McCoy reported on the incident in an opinion piece for The New Republic.

The Fed chair has been a favorite target in Trump’s rhetoric. I Photo: The White House

The fabricated letter featured multiple red flags: excessive hyphenation, punctuation mistakes (such as “Over the past years. I have worked alongside …” and “...effectiveness, My decision comes from …”), and a strange line break placing an apostrophe-s at the start of a new line. Most blatantly, the words encircling the Federal Reserve System seal at the bottom were gibberish—characteristic of AI-generated images containing text.

Nevertheless, Lee shared the image on X, captioning it “Powell’s out!” alongside false-alarm emojis.

According to Politico’s Jordain Carney, Lee deleted the tweet soon after “out of an abundance of caution.” When asked by reporters about the image’s authenticity, Lee admitted, “I don’t know whether it’s legit or not.”

MAGA influencer Benny Johnson also posted the image, writing, “BREAKING: Fed Chair Jerome Powell has resigned,” before taking it down. “Sorry. Bad look,” he later wrote. “I still want Jerome Powell to resign really bad.”

Many Trump supporters were quick to believe the image, likely due to recent tensions between Trump and Powell.

The Fed chair has been a favorite target in Trump’s rhetoric, with the president calling him everything from “numbskull” to “low IQ” over the Fed’s refusal to cut interest rates—a move the central bank views as a safeguard amid Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy.