WASHINGTON — One agency head led the United States out of the COVID pandemic while avoiding a recession — something many prominent economists thought would be impossible.

The other has, after just weeks on the job, triggered an investigation into his use of an unauthorized phone app to discuss sensitive military attack plans while more broadly wreaking havoc and turmoil at the Pentagon.

Guess which one President Donald Trump wants to fire.

“He’s doing a great job. It’s just fake news,” Trump said Monday about defense secretary and former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth a day after revelations that he messaged a second Signal group text chat, which included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, about an imminent U.S. attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen last month.

Meanwhile, Trump ramped up his attacks on Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, calling him a “major loser” in a social media post Monday morning that again called on Powell to lower interest rates to boost the cratering financial markets that Trump caused with his trade war.

“There can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW. Europe has already ‘lowered’ seven times. Powell has always been ‘To [sic] Late,’ except when it came to the Election period when he lowered in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected. How did that work out?” Trump wrote.

The financial markets, already down significantly since Trump intensified his trade war with the rest of the planet early this month, reacted accordingly, with the S&P 500 dropping 2.4% and the 10-year Treasury bond yield rising.

“He wants to blame the Fed for the market collapse to distract from the trade policy fiasco,” said Marc Short, who worked in Trump’s first-term White House as then-Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff.

Powell was originally appointed by Trump to run the Fed in late 2017. He was reappointed to a second four-year term by President Joe Biden in 2022 and has won praise from experts across the political spectrum for accomplishing a “soft landing” for the economy following pandemic-fueled inflation. A number of economists had predicted that a recession was likely — Bloomberg in 2022 predicted a 100% chance of a recession by 2024 — but Powell proved them wrong.

Of late, he has angered Trump by refusing to lower interest rates quickly and explaining that Trump’s tariffs are likely to bring inflation back. Powell’s term does not end for another year, but Trump has repeatedly spoken about firing him — an option that many legal experts do not believe he has.

“The current view among legal scholars suggests not, but that won’t stop him from attacking [Powell] daily,” said Ty Cobb, a lawyer who worked in the White House Counsel’s office in Trump’s first term. “He may try to fire him anyways or get Congress to try to change the law. Man is all about rage, grievances and vengeance. His narcissism is a disabling disease. He has no control over it and his access to the truth is very fragile among his delusions and rage.”

The latest will-he-or-won’t-he firing drama again highlights the contrast between Trump’s actions and the smart and decisive businessman he played on the “reality” game show “The Apprentice.” Trump built his businessman credentials on the “you’re fired” line he would deliver at the end of each episode, even if he occasionally forgot the script and fired the wrong person.

In the White House during his first term, Trump was loath to fire people and typically assigned an underling to carry out the task or did so remotely, even via Twitter posts.

Trump hired then-friend and adviser Anthony Scaramucci to a top position, but then left it to then-chief of staff John Kelly to fire him days later. Trump famously fired his original chief of staff, Reince Priebus, by announcing his replacement via tweet as Air Force One prepared to land at Joint Base Andrews. Priebus’ van was then booted from Trump’s motorcade back to the White House.

That Hegseth’s problems at the Pentagon have been driven by news media coverage — the story of his participation in a Signal chat about the Yemen raid with other top administration officials came to light because journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently invited to the text chain — may allow Hegseth to survive notwithstanding a Defense Department inspector general’s investigation into the matter.

“I think he will not fire him,” Scaramucci said. “Unless there is some kind of blowback on Trump that I don’t understand.”

Which, said Cobb, is great news for America’s adversaries. “Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are having a field day mining all things classified thanks to these buffoons!” he said.