Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump blamed Monday's stock market dive on Vice President Kamala Harris, leading an expert to give CNN viewers what he called the easiest fact-check of his life.
Trump took to his own social media app Truth Social to call the dip the "Kamala Crash" and said she brought about the "Great Depression of 2024."
He wrote: "VOTERS HAVE A CHOICE — TRUMP PROSPERITY, OR THE KAMALA CRASH & GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024, NOT TO MENTION THE PROBABILITY OF WORLD WAR lll IF THESE VERY STUPID PEOPLE REMAIN IN OFFICE. REMEMBER, TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!"
Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, appeared late Monday on CNN with host Laura Coates to bring facts to the discourse.
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Wolfers said that the frantic sell-off affects certain folks more than others.
How bad was today's sell-off? Honestly, it depends who you are," he said. "If you're a guy on Wall Street earning more money than you and I are in a flashy suit whose annual bonus depends on the ups and downs of the market, yeah. Today was pretty rough."
If you're not on Wall Street, however, and instead are on Main Street, the sell-off wasn't felt nearly as much.
"Employment remains high. Wages are rising. Incomes are rising. And there's a whole lot of hullabaloo on Wall Street that doesn't really have that much of a direct effect over your life."
Moreover, he added, Wall Street is bouncing right back.
Wolfers called the market dip an "immense over-reaction" — and went so far as to call it a "tantrum" brought on by fears the Federal Reserve is "asleep at the wheel" and ought to have cut interest rates further.
"Folks on Wall Street wanted their interest rate cuts. They didn't get them. And they're worried that the Federal Reserve will fall behind," he said.
When Coates asked Wolfers to weigh in on Trump's post blaming his Democratic rival for the crash, Wolfers laughed.
"This might be the easiest fact-check of my life," he said. "The last time I looked it up Kamala Harris was the vice president. The vice president has essentially no power, except for certifying elections, we know that's very important for voting in the Senate, which she didn't do. And moreover, there's a president. There's a federal reserve chair. There's a Congress. There's no particular action she took — notice, there's no particular action she took that he's pointing out. It doesn't seem at all plausible that Kamala Harris caused any part of this."
Watch the clip below or at this link.
