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Ross A. Lincoln
5 min read
MSNBC’s Ari Melber took a close look at the damage being done to the U.S. economy by Donald Trump, exemplied Monday by a continued sharp stock market drop, warning this so-called “Trump slump” means we may be “in for a rocky ride.”
And he later noted, it’s giving a lot of people electoral buyer’s remorse.
Melber noted that Monday’s 900-point stock on the Down Jones was complimented by the NASDAQ exchange’s “worst day in over two years,” and ran through clips of news coverage of this growing crisis. Then he noted the curious fact that Trump himself has recently started talking as if he’s trying to create a recession on purpose, for instance on Monday when he dismissively told Fox News people should probably expect one in terms that suggest he isn’t worried about it.
“President Trump, who has long cited his perceived or claimed business record, sometimes in a boardroom that was actually a television set, sometimes in other actual, real world business deals, branding and casinos,” Melber continued, “has long cited that as his differentiator across a lot of other candidates and leaders, and we have seen evidence that at times, the voters have bought that the idea that his background in business or the television business would somehow make him a great leader for the economy.”
Melber noted that the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t really his fault, “but now we are seeing a direct response to his leadership, the way he is running the government, the reports of these chaotic cabinet meetings, the tariffs that are announced withdrawn, repackaged and during an interview on Fox with Maria barroma… she asked some straightforward questions and got some really striking answers, including the sitting president saying he couldn’t really rule out the possibility of a recession.”
Melber played a clip of that disturbing exchange, and commented, it is “certainly not the kind of business acumen, economic leadership that has a message that might help stabilize the markets. And anyone who’s followed the markets knows they do have a kind of a logic all their own. They’re not going to be sweet talked into something by a president, any president who wants things to just be better, but they might have taken a better message that was steady or clear about what the United States was going to do, or taking things off the table or clarifying why.”
Melber reminded viewers of Trump’s chaotic last week, with his announced tarriffs that he quickly withdrewm then didn’t. Then Melber highlighted an atonishing comment from Trump who, Melber noted, has pretty much always bragged about being good for the stock market.
