Day 1,131: Trump on Dow dropping over 1,000 points in one day due to coronavirus fears: ‘starting to look very good to me’
Donald Trump wants credit for every peak in the stock market, but tries to distance himself from the valleys. Monday, the Dow Jones lost 1,031 points, or 3.6%, and Trump gave a bizarre twist on his usual narrative. He claimed that the market was “starting to look very good” to him.
The biggest reason for the drop is the coronavirus that is wreaking havoc on many parts of the world.
More than 79,000 people worldwide have been infected by the new coronavirus. China, where the virus originated, still has the majority of cases and deaths. The country’s economy has been hardest hit as businesses and factories sit idle and people remain home-bound because the government has severely restricted travel and imposed strict quarantine measures to stop the virus from spreading. Economists have cut growth estimates for the Chinese economy.
The ripple effects of the outbreak are being felt all around the world, as China is both a major importer of goods and a source of parts for intricate supply chains.
As far as coronavirus preparation in the U.S., there is very little, thanks to Trump. He has proposed cutting global health funds by billions and has claimed that the coronavirus will “miraculously” disappear in warmer weather. Trump also eliminated key positions set up to combat crises like the one at hand.
It wasn’t just a single senior director that was fired, either. Entire teams in both the NSC and DHS were eliminated, and the global health section of the CDC was forced to cut their international presence by nearly 80%.
In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.
Meanwhile, the second-highest ranking member of the DHS — who, again, works for a department that had their entire global epidemic team wiped out by Trump — is searching Twitter for help on the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, it’s been news for many days that Trump is actively prioritizing the stock market over actual American lives.
On Jan. 31, the same day several airlines suspended flights and the United States announced its escalated response, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 600 points, or 2 percent. Trump grew concerned that any stronger action by his administration would hurt the economy, and he has told advisers that he does not want the administration to do or say anything that would further spook the markets. He remains worried that any large-scale outbreak could hurt his reelection bid.
There is the real potential for a global pandemic that can affect millions of people and grind much of the world to a halt. Trump has already gutted the U.S.’s first line of defense and is now content to claim that things “look very good,” despite all evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, he is banking on a summer miracle that is, at best, many months away.
1,131 days in, 331 to go
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