November 12, 2018

Donald Trump’s Delusion du Jour: Blaming House Democrats for Sinking Stocks

Wrong again.

Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Days after threatening House Democrats who plan to investigate his administration, Donald Trump leveled a new, baseless claim against his rivals in Congress.

While the Dow Jones Industrial Average did drop more than 400 points as of 11:40 a.m. on Monday, analysts pointed not to politics, but the technology supply firm Lumentum Holdings Inc., whose stock plunged by more than 25 percent after revising its second-quarter revenue estimates downward. Apple, which is Lumentum’s largest client, also saw the value of its stock tumble on Monday. 

Experts have blamed recent market volatility more on Trump’s own economic policies than the prospect of Democratic oversight. His trade wars with China and with traditional allies such as Canada and Mexico have rattled investors while the result of the midterm elections, which handed the House to Democrats and firmed up Republican control of the Senate, aligned with nearly all major predictions from pollsters. 

The president’s Monday-morning tweet baffled some market observers and journalists, including Business Insider co-founder Henry Blodget and Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel.

Fact-free attacks on the newly empowered House Democrats have been part of Trump’s standard operating procedure for the past week. A day after the midterms, he threatened to retaliate against Democrats by investigating them in the Senate. “Two can play that game!” he tweeted. During a press conference later that day, he spoke of adopting a “warlike posture” if Democrats target his family and personal business dealings.

In using the phrase “presidential harassment,” he appears to be drawing from the playbook of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who used that phrase to warn Democrats that a strategy of intensively investigating the White House could backfire. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the presumptive chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has said his panel will focus their attention next year on Trump’s alleged ties to Russian money laundering and his attacks on media outlets such as the Washington Post and CNN. Acquiring Trump’s tax returns is another top Democratic priority. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate