Trump holds 1-minute press conference just to brag about stock market

Donald Trump on Tuesday made a surprise visit to the White House briefing room, with Mike Pence by his side, where he gave a one-minute speech taking credit for the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting 30,000 for the first time in history.

Trump immediately walked away after concluding his remarks, without taking any questions, even as reporters asked if he will ever concede.

Of course, the stock market rose because Trump finally agreed to allow the federal government to cooperate with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition — giving Biden monetary resources and access to federal employees to ensure a smooth transfer of power.

On Monday, more than 160 business leaders had encouraged Trump in an open letter to accept that he had lost the election and allow the transition to begin, saying his deal was putting the country at risk.

Trump announced Monday night that he was allowing the transition to begin, but still has refused to accept his landslide loss to Biden, vowing to continue to fight to overturn the results — even as his anti-democratic coup to steal the election continues to suffer embarrassing losses.

What’s more, by Trump’s own logic from 2016, after Trump was declared the winner of the election, the credit for the stock market rise goes to Biden.

Trump tweeted multiple times in 2017 that he was responsible for any stock market gains after Nov. 8, 2016.

“Since November 8th, Election Day, the Stock Market has posted $3.2 trillion in GAINS and consumer confidence is at a 15 year high. Jobs!” Trump tweeted in March 2017.

On Aug. 1, 2017, Trump tweeted: “Stock Market could hit all-time high (again) 22,000 today. Was 18,000 only 6 months ago on Election Day. Mainstream media seldom mentions!”

A few months later, in October 2017, Trump tweeted: “Since Election Day on November 8, the Stock Market is up more than 25%, unemployment is at a 17 year low & companies are coming back to U.S.”

Ultimately, Trump claimed that if Biden won the election, the stock market would tank.

“You’ll have a depression,” Trump said at a rally in Florida just ahead of the election in 2020. “All that money. All those 401Ks, they’re going to go right down the tubes, throw it out.”

That prediction has been proven obviously false.

Here is the full transcript of Trump’s brief appearance:

Well, thank you very much, and I just want to congratulate everybody.

 

The stock market Dow Jones Industrial Average just hit 30,000, which is the highest in history. We’ve never broken 30,000, and that’s despite everything that’s taken place with the pandemic.

 

I’m very thrilled with what’s happened on the vaccine front. That’s been absolutely incredible. Nothing like that has ever happened medically, and I think people are acknowledging that, and it’s having a big effect.

 

But the stock market’s just broken 30,000. Never been broken, that number. That’s a sacred number. Thirty thousand. Nobody thought they’d ever see it.

 

That’s the ninth time since the beginning of 2020, and it’s the 48th time that we’ve broken records during the Trump administration.

 

And I just want to congratulate all the people within the administration that work so hard.

 

And most importantly, I want to congratulate the people of our country because there are no people like you. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.