'Horrifyingly irresponsible': Paul Krugman points with alarm at Trump's online antics

World-renowned economist Paul Krugman sounded the alarm Saturday on President Donald Trump’s social media activity, calling many of the president’s online posts “horrifyingly irresponsible,” with many having led to real-world market dips.

“In the past, stagflation has been the result of external affects; war in the Middle East, things like that,” Krugman said, speaking on MSNBC with host Ali Velshi.

“Now, this is all self-generated, self-inflicted, ‘Trump-enomics’ has done this to us. I actually do, fairly often, look at Trump's Truth Social feed, and this is not a guy I would allow within three miles of making monetary policy. This is just horrifyingly irresponsible.”

Trump’s chaotic and unpredictable social media activity has had devastating real-world effects on markets.

As recently as Monday, Trump’s statement on social media that there was “virtually no inflation” led to a sharp drop in Australian markets down to a two-week low. His announcement via social media that he had fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics also tanked American markets, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping by 1.2% that day, and the Nasdaq, declining by 2.2%.

Krugman, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, said that not only were Trump’s social media posts negatively impacting the economy, but that nearly all of the alarming economic signals could be traced directly back to Trump’s policy agenda.

“We're experiencing, at least, a mild case of stagflation; we don't know how mild it will stay, but for the moment, yeah, we're getting an inflationary impact from the tariffs, and also deportations,” Krugman said.

“People are really focused on tariffs and trade, but let's not forget that we're intimidating, scaring [and] arresting the people who pick a lot of our vegetables, the people who do a lot of our construction work, who do meat packing. All of this adds to this is not a good economy.”

Krugman anticipated that the Federal Reserve would, “for sure,” cut interest rates at its upcoming meeting this month, much to Trump’s wishes, but that slashing rates would not “fix the underlying problem,” and furthermore, would not “deliver the kind of wonderful economy that Trump claims we have.”

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