HOUSTON - FEBRUARY 25, 2016: President-elect Donald Trump talks to the media at a public press event after the Republican National Debate in Houston, Texas. (Shutterstock)
President Donald Trump is downplaying his influence on the stock market after watching it plunge by more than 2,000 points Monday — with another 500-point tumble soon after opening Tuesday.
But MSNBC showed a supercut of Trump's past speeches in which he boasted about his impact on the markets and claimed credit for a successful surge.
"I don't want to be braggadocious, but we'll say it anyway, the Trump Effect, it's you. You're the effect. Since the election, the stock market has surged," Trump said on Jan. 19 at a pre-inauguration rally.
On Feb. 9, Trump told Fox News, "I was very proud to have handed over the country, and the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in. It was an amazing achievement."
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In the lower right corner of the screen, MSNBC showed a box of the Dow Jones Industrial Average as it continued to fall.
Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Trump claimed that the market crash wasn't as bad as people thought.
"Now we've got tariffs and the market has been going down," said Bartiromo.
"Well, not much, I mean, in all fairness," Trump claimed. "What I have to do is build a strong country. You can't really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters, and you can't go by that."
He then blamed former President Joe Biden, saying, "The country was very poorly run for four years."
He then added that tariffs "may go up," adding: "I don't think we'll go down, but we may go up and — but, you know, they have plenty of clarity. They just use that. That's like, almost a sound bite. They always say that we want clarity."
The Dow cratered in 2020 amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. The crash was global, with Asian, Australian, and European markets all falling. The month before, the Dow Jones reached a new record of 29,398 on Feb. 14, 2020, a 10-year chart shows. It then fell more than 10,000 points. Trump did build it back, handing over a Dow over 31,000 — though under President Joe Biden, the Dow reached a new record of over 45,000.
Commentators Catherine Rampell and Eugene Daniels noted that a president usually doesn't have much impact on the markets, but Trump's tariffs, job numbers, and fears of a recession have spooked investors.
See the supercut below or at the link here.
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