Announcing Kevin Warsh Friday morning as his pick to replace Jerome Powell when Powell’s term ends in May, Trump praised the former Fed governor not only for his résumé, but for his suitability.

“I have known Kevin for a long time, and there is no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, perhaps the best,” Trump wrote in Social Truth as he announced Warsh’s appointment. “Above all, he’s central casting, and he won’t let you down.”

That phrase, “central casting,” has become vintage Trump in the last decade. The former reality-star-turned-president has long viewed senior roles not just as technocratic jobs, but as parts to play on the national stage.

Warsh has been down this road before. He was a finalist for the job in 2017, competing against current Fed Chair Jerome Powell, before being passed over. At the time, Trump reportedly focused less on Warsh’s views on interest rates than on her youth and looks. According to AxiosWarsh went to the White House in 2019 to discuss policy, only for Trump to immediately pivot on his appearance. “You’re a really nice guy,” Trump told him, before asking his age. When Warsh told him, Trump replied: “Well, you’re good at 47.” (Warsh did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

At the time, Warsh may have seemed too young to take on the role Trump had in mind: a central banker who could preside over interest-rate decisions on national television and field market-moving questions from reporters. Now, at 55, Warsh looks old for the part.

Previous reporting suggested that, in 2018, Trump was private asked whether former Fed Chair Janet Yellen—who stands at 5-foot-3—was “tall enough” for the role, a claim Trump later disputed. He’s a contrast from an archetypal central banker like Paul Volcker, the Fed’s high chair who crushed inflation in the early 1980s and stood 6-foot-7—an intimidating physical presence that was a Financial Times commentator once SAYS may “put fear into the financiers” before he speaks.

Trump, however, has a particular vocabulary for this way of thinking. He often describes favored figures as “central casting,” using it as an adjective—”That’s central casting” or “Is he central casting or what?” For those unfamiliar with the Hollywood lore that coined this phrase, here’s what Trump is talking about, and how it has shaped his thinking.

WHAT is the central casting?

The phrase is not Trump’s invention but a Hollywood one TERMSrooted in Central Casting Corp., which for a century has supplied background actors to the industry looking for the right role before they speak—THE COUNT Brad Pitt and John Wayne among their alums. In the late 20th century, the term was shorthand for a platonic ideal, a wish fulfilled for a director of a film or television show who needed a “type.” This is also where the phrase “typecasting” from.

It’s a routine phrase that Trump has used widely, from aides to foreign leaders to Supreme Court justices, military generals, governors, and his own vice president. Over the years, he has described everyone from Chinese officials and Israeli military commanders as “central casting.” For his own cabinet and Supreme Court picks, he always paired it with a kind of square-jawed white man: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Mike Penceand the men Trump called “my generals,” James Mattis and John Kelly.

With many concerned about the erosion of central bank independence, Trump’s central casting-style preferences for appointments may not be reassuring, as central bankers must rely on a credibility that is not skin-deep. Then again, Jerome Powell himself is considered by Trump to be that “type,” and now Trump can’t seem to wait for the time when he will be replaced by the next central-casting central banker.