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Donald Trump took the highly unusual step this week of saying he’s hoping to see Americans suffer an economic calamity. In an on-air interview this week, the likely GOP nominee not only predicted an economic “crash,” he added, “I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months, because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”
In other words, Trump would like to see widespread public suffering — in his own country, sooner rather than later — in ways that wouldn’t cause him any political inconvenience.
This was on Monday. Two days later, the former president participated in a town-hall event in Iowa on Fox News, and he was given an opportunity to walk it back. As NBC News noted, the Republican passed on that opportunity.
Trump was asked whether his recent comments that he hoped an economic crash would occur now — and not during a prospective second term — meant he was hoping for a crash. Trump didn’t directly answer the question, saying instead that he felt “the economy is horrible” before reiterating that “when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during the next 12 months, because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”
It would’ve been easy for the former president to say he wants to see American families prosper, no matter which party is in power, but Trump instead echoed his original comments, indifferent to the controversy he’d created for himself.
A spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign said in a written statement, after the Fox News event, “Two days ago, Donald Trump said he hoped the United States would enter a recession this year. Tonight, he didn’t back away from that comment — he doubled down on it. That’s as disqualifying as it is rich from the guy who was the first president since Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when they came in, leaving behind an economic crisis that Joe Biden has been fixing since Day One.”
The next morning, the incumbent Democrat weighed in directly with a video message posted to social media.
The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, meanwhile, helped remind the GOP frontrunner of how easy it could’ve been to answer a question like this one.
“What he should have said instead is something like this: My opponent’s policies have set us on the path to disaster, but I hope the disaster doesn’t come until I’m in office — because I don’t want the American people to suffer unnecessarily, and, because I’m a very stable genius, I alone can fix it,” Krugman wrote.
“But no, Trump says he wants the disaster to happen on someone else’s watch, specifically and openly so that he won’t have to bear the responsibility,” the columnist added.
To date, I still haven’t seen any prominent public voices, in either party, make any effort to defend the former president’s rhetoric.