Kevin Hassett, who is a candidate for Fed chair, tells Larry Kudlow that the only way to explain a Fed decision not to cut in December would be due to anti-Trump partisanship. "There are a bunch of Fed speakers the last couple of days saying, 'Hold on now with more rate cuts.' But again, I want to remind you, Larry, that at the meeting before last that everybody thought for sure that there would be cuts in December*. And the news since then was we had a government shutdown, maybe a 1.5% hit to GDP and a CPI inflation number that was way below expectation. So there was good news on inflation and bad news on fourth quarter GDP because of the government shutdown. And so how does that make them less likely to cut unless they're being partisan? And so you and I have talked about this before, but I was very, very disappointed that they didn't even have an excuse for the change in posture." *The summary of economic projections referenced here was very narrowly divided between roughly half of participants who penciled in at least three cuts and half who penciled in two or fewer. Hassett: "It's really, really important that we have a politically independent Federal Reserve, and I'm sure that any of the candidates that the president and Scott Bessent have been talking to will be much better than what we've seen." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHjaNSSZ9cg(Nick Timiraos)