Some people look at a stock market plunge as a buying opportunity. Real estate mogul-turned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sees it more as a campaigning opportunity, going so far as to warn about the possibility of a looming economic depression. His solution? You guessed it – Vote Trump.
With world markets down Monday morning, driven in large part by a growing economic crisis in China, all indicators were pointing to a steep drop at the open of U.S. markets this morning. Trump phoned in to the Fox & Friends morning talk show at 7:30 to get in a pre-emptive “I told you so.”
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“I’m the one who says you’ve got to start uncoupling from China because China’s got problems. They have big problems, and they’re bringing us down,” Trump said, to the apparently unanimous agreement of the three hosts.
“I’ve been talking about China for years,” Trump said.
“Years,” Fox host Steve Doocy echoed, nodding his head in agreement.
“China’s going bad and it’s going to bring us down too because we’re so heavily coupled with China,” Trump added. “Look, we are being run by people who don’t have a clue, they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re totally incompetent. We’ve gotta stop.”
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At 9:30 on the nose, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average opening down a shocking 1,000 points, Trump tweeted out another comment, this time broadening his critique to all of Asia.
Thirteen minutes later, Trump was back on Twitter warning, “This could get very messy!” He blamed “poor planning and allowing China and Asia to dictate the agenda,” whatever that means. He ended with the instruction: “Vote Trump.”
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By 11 a.m., the markets had recovered somewhat, but Trump was still predicting doom. In a tweet linking to a short video on his Instagram page, he appeared to be warning of a possible depression.
“I’ve been telling everybody for a long time China’s taking our jobs, they’re taking our money,” Trump said staring straight at the camera in a video shot from rather close range. “Be careful. They’ll bring us down. You have to know what you’re doing. We have nobody that has a clue.”