“Well, it’s staying at zero because she’s obviously political and she’s doing what Obama wants her to do,” Trump told CNBC in a phone interview, saying she should be “ashamed” of what she was doing to the country.

“And I know that’s not supposed to be the way it is. As soon as they go up, the stock market’s going down. … I believe it’s a false market because money is essentially free,” he said.

“Any increase at all will be a very, very small increase because they want to keep the market up so Obama goes out and let the new guy … raise interest rates … and watch what happens in the stock market.”

Trump said that as a businessman, “I love low interest rates,” but that they hurt many people who were living on their savings.

Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari responded in a later interview on CNBC by denying that politics had influence on Fed policymaking.

“Politics simply does not come up,” he said. “We look at the economic data and … everyone around the table is committed to achieving our dual mandate,” Kashkari said.

Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, asked about political pressure on the Fed at a National Association for Business Economics conference in Atlanta, said, “I don’t see the world that way.”