Trump says he hopes there will be an economic crash in 2024, so he is not blamed.
Former President Donald J. Trump said in an interview Monday that he believed the economy would collapse — and that he hoped it would happen in the coming year, putting the blame on President Biden’s administration.
“We have an economy that is so fragile, and the only reason it’s running right now is to vent the fumes of what we’ve done,” Trump told conservative commentator Lou Dobbs. an interview broadcast Monday evening on the platform of MyPillow founder Mike Lindell. ‘Only fumes are released. And if there is a crash, I hope it happens in the next twelve months, because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”
President Hoover presided over the stock market crash of 1929 that caused the Great Depression.
Trump hopes to capitalize on voters’ economic concerns, as a number of polls have shown voters trust him and other Republicans more than they trust Biden when it comes to the economy. In the interview, he criticized spending by Mr. Biden and Democrats in Congress on infrastructure and renewable energy.
The Biden campaign has been frustrated by the discrepancy between positive economic indicators — including strong GDP growth, more jobs and higher wages — and negative public opinion. Many Americans are still struggling to make ends meet, mortgage rates are high, and while inflation is down significantly from 2022 peaks, those price increases are still weighing heavily on voters’ minds.
Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, condemned Trump’s comments hoping for a recession, saying the former president’s policies would “exacerbate inflation with tax breaks for wealthy special interests.”
“It is the duty of a commander in chief to always put the American people first, and never hope to inflict economic pain on hardworking families for their own political benefit,” Mr. Bates said. “Republican officials should welcome the economic progress President Biden is making, instead of revealing distorted true colors that would shrink America’s middle class in the name of their own cynical self-interest.”
Pieter Bakker reporting contributed.