WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren got a call from President Trump on Monday after she spent the morning criticizing him in a speech and a subsequent cable news interview, the Massachusetts Democrat said in statement.
Warren did not disclose what Trump said to her on the call, nor how long they spoke. But she said that she told the president if he wants to lower costs for Americans as he promised during the campaign, he should support Warren-backed legislation to cap credit card rates and promote more housing.
“In my remarks ... I said that if he really wants to get something done, including capping credit card interest rates or lowering housing costs, he would use his leverage and pick up the phone,” Warren said in a statement. “After my speech, the President called me, and I delivered this same message on affordability to him directly.”
A White House official, who requested to not be named as they were not authorized to comment publicly, said the call was “productive” and focused on credit card interest rates and the cost of housing.
Warren delivered a speech at the National Press Club on Monday where she criticized Trump over the Department of Justice’s investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and laid out a populist economic policy vision for Democrats.
She followed the speech with an appearance on CNN, where she laid out similar themes. Trump called shortly afterward.
“I almost didn’t answer because I didn’t recognize the number,” Warren told the Globe. She said she couldn’t remember the last time she spoke with him and said he wasn’t angry.
“He wanted to talk about costs, what I talked about in the speech,” Warren said. She declined to divulge his responses.
Warren and Trump are frequent critics of one another, with Trump often referring to her by a derogatory nickname he gave her years ago based on her claim of Native American heritage.
Still, they have at times embraced similar policy ideas, such as eliminating the limit on the national debt, and more recently, capping credit card rates, though Trump has yet to muscle those proposals through the Republican-controlled Congress.
Warren also mentioned that she asked Trump to back a bipartisan housing bill she led with South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott. Scott and Warren are the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. The bill would streamline regulations and promote housing solutions like prefabrication to spur construction of new houses and apartments. She has said she’d work to pass a credit card rate cap if Trump was serious about it.
Earlier in the day, Warren was sharply critical of Trump not just on pocket book issues, but on his continued attacks on Powell. In particular, she decried the revelation that the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Powell and the Federal Reserve regarding the ongoing renovation of its buildings.
Warren herself has been a longtime critic of Powell’s, but has defended him this year in the face of repeated attacks by Trump stemming from his frustration that the independent Federal Reserve was not more aggressive in lowering interest rates.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had no knowledge of the Department of Justice’s investigation.
“Donald Trump has made it clear, since right at the beginning of his presidency, that he wants to be the decisionmaker on where interest rates should be set,” Warren said in her speech on Monday. “This is a question about weaponizing the Department of Justice right out in plain view in order for Donald Trump to try to have a chance to take over the Fed as quickly as possible so he can make political decisions that he thinks will help him.”
Warren said Trump was “starting to sweat” about economic pain felt by American families and wants to control the Federal Reserve so he can generate a burst of economic strength.
She warned that although lowering interest rates may cause short-term benefits for the economy, too drastic of a change will cause inflation, which will have consequences for the United States and other countries that depend on the stability of American currency.
“The Fed has been the gold standard for that kind of monetary policy decisionmaking, and Donald Trump is just burning that to the ground. And that’s going to be costly for the United States and all of our global markets,” Warren said.
Jim Puzzanghera of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Tal Kopan can be reached at tal.kopan@globe.com. Follow her @talkopan. Shae Lake can be reached at shae.lake@globe.com.