President Donald Trump is actively campaigning for his reelection this November and the main highlight of his campaign involves the economy and the market. However, upon returning from his Florida fundraiser and after the market suffered a very big blow in Dow points, Trump refused to address any concerns.
Politicalflare reports that Trump spent the weekend at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to hold a fundraiser for his reelection campaign. The news recently broke out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered a major drop of over 2000 points, marking the worst trading day since the financial crisis in 2008. This is inevitably caused by the growing threat of the coronavirus to the United States, with more and more cases being confirmed over time.
Aside from the Dow, the S&P 500 also suffered a 7.6 percent loss and the Nasdaq also had a 7.3 percent loss. As the markets closed Monday afternoon, Trump was seen returning to the White House but did not respond to questions nor address what was happening in Wall Street.
The global pandemic that is COVID-19 proved to be the biggest challenge for Trump and his administration, which is seeing criticisms from both parties on how they are responding to the situation. The Trump administration has continuously downplayed the severity of the coronavirus despite the increasing cases of people testing positive and most especially its effects on the stock market.
The latter is making itself more evident, but it appears that Trump refuses to believe that it is actually true and according to Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair, Trump is resorting to pinning the blame on the media for the collapse. A White House official revealed that the president is planning to ask the Department of Justice to investigate the media for market manipulation. At the same time, Trump is also not happy with the West Wing side of things and how they are handling the news.
It is clear that Trump is trying to take control of the media, and wanting an investigation into the media for supposedly spreading misinformation would deem impossible. According to former White House ethics counsel Richard Painter, the idea of investigating the media alone is outrageous. “The only way they could be prosecuted is if they shorted stock and ran deliberately false news stories to manipulate the market – which they’re not,” said Painter.