Trump’s Obsession – When Fear of Losing Power Turns Into Racist Tirades

It is an old pattern that repeats itself with uncanny precision: Donald Trump feels threatened – and his first reaction is dehumanization. This time his anger is directed at Lisa Cook, the first African American woman in the leadership of the Federal Reserve, who made history by taking a seat on one of the most powerful bodies in the global economy. Cook is an economist of international renown, educated at the University of California, with a Ph.D. from Berkeley, with research on financial crises, innovation, and economic participation. Yet in the eyes of the American president she is reduced to a scapegoat: “fat black women” – so the slur, according to the account of biographer Michael Wolff when asked.

As we have since learned, there are letters from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that link Lisa Cook to alleged violations in connection with mortgage loans. These documents do carry the official letterhead of the agency and at first glance appear to be serious referrals to the Department of Justice, but upon closer examination it becomes clear that they are part of a targeted lawfare strategy: the misuse of legal processes to discredit political opponents. Legally the accusations are completely baseless – they rely on constructions that can occur in any ordinary real estate financing, but provide no evidence whatsoever of criminal conduct. So far no independent body has confirmed the allegations. What remains is the attempt to use an official appearance and instrumentalized bureaucracy to undermine the credibility of the first African American woman in the leadership of the Federal Reserve and thus silence an independent voice at the heart of the US economy.

That Trump is attacking Lisa Cook at precisely this moment is no coincidence. For months he has been trying to bring the Federal Reserve under his control in order to lower interest rates according to his political needs. Jerome Powell, the current Fed chair, is still resisting this pressure, but the power struggle is in full swing. Cook, who is known for her independence, becomes a symbolic target, a projection surface for Trump’s obsession with breaking the institutions that limit him. And in this dynamic it becomes clear how much his political actions merge with personal resentments.

Trump’s disdain for Black women is not new, it runs like a red thread through his career. It is a deep-seated pattern of fear, condescension, and projection. Consider his attacks on Congresswoman Maxine Waters, whom he defamed as “a woman with very low IQ” because she criticized his policies. Or his remark about journalist April Ryan, to whom he suggested at a press conference that she should “ask her friends in the Congressional Black Caucus,” as if it were not about journalistic work but about ethnic affiliation. Even CNN reporter Abby Phillip was in a public scene described as someone who “asks dumb questions” – a derogatory judgment that very often applied to Black women, while white male reporters were treated with milder mockery. For Trump the idea that Black women could exercise authority over his fate is a nightmare. Whether judges, journalists, or now an African American woman in the leadership of the Federal Reserve – they embody for him a form of loss of control that he will fight by any means.

The attack on Lisa Cook is therefore more than a personal insult. It is part of a larger struggle for the independence of the Federal Reserve, a struggle that could shake the balance of the world economy. If Trump succeeds, if he degrades the central bank into an instrument of his politics, then not only the American economy but global stability is at stake. Cook thus becomes a double symbol: as a target of a racist president and as guardian of an institution he wants to destroy. The language Trump uses reveals the contempt that runs through his political strategy. “Fat Black Women” – that is not only a repulsive denigration, it is a cipher for the way he marks otherness, how he stages difference as weakness. It serves the function of mobilizing followers, sharpening enemy images, securing power through humiliation. But the more often he repeats these words, the more clearly the fear emerges that they are meant to conceal: fear of losing control, fear of female authority, fear of the independence of those who refuse to be intimidated.

Lisa Cook has so far remained silent in the face of the attacks. And perhaps that is her greatest strength. She knows that her task is not to be drawn into the whirlpool of insults but to defend the stability of an institution whose independence has in these days become the last bastion of democratic order. Trump’s tirades are not a sideshow, not an accident. They are the symptom of a deeper power struggle in which racism and sexism are not background noise but tools. Those who dismiss them as mere outbursts overlook how closely they are interwoven with his strategy. Michael Wolff puts it succinctly: “It is no coincidence whom he attacks. It is a system that he cultivates – a system of humiliation.” The attack on Lisa Cook is therefore an attack on us all: on the idea of an independent judiciary, a free press, a stable monetary policy. It is an attack on the notion that democracy cannot exist without respect. And it is a reflection of the fear of a man who knows very well that his power is built on sand – and who therefore lashes out all the more desperately.

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