Former President Donald Trump is anticipating that the United States will face an economic “crash” and said he hopes it will be within the next year.
“When there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president, I just don’t want to be Herbert Hoover,” Trump said during an interview with former Fox host Lou Dobbs on Monday.
The stock market crash marked former President Herbert Hoover’s first year in office in 1929, six months after he became president. The crash signaled the start of the Great Depression, which led to the downfall of his presidency.
Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential primary and will likely go on to face President Joe Biden in the 2024 general election. The former president has ramped up his messaging on the economy, a sore point for Biden’s reelection campaign, as a way to gain support heading into the Iowa caucuses next week.
A CNN poll from December found that just 33% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of the economy. His approval rating sits at 41%, according to a CBS poll released on Monday.
Respondents of the Monday poll are less pessimistic about the year, with half expecting the economy to be slowing or in a recession — down from most of 2023 when 6 in 10 believed an economic crisis was on the horizon.
The former president, who regularly attacks Biden for his economic policies, described the economy as “so fragile” in the interview, stating it was “running off the fumes” of the Trump administration.
Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement to the Washington Examiner that Biden began fixing the “economic crisis Trump left behind” on “day one.”
“Donald Trump should just say he doesn’t give a damn about people, because that’s exactly what he’s telling the American people when he says he hopes the economy crashes,” Chavez Rodriguez said. “In his relentless pursuit of power and retribution, Donald Trump is rooting for a reality where millions of Americans lose their jobs and live with the crushing anxiety of figuring out how to afford basic needs.”
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Chavez Rodriguez pointed to the Biden administration’s work in creating “14 million jobs, including bringing back hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, and lowering costs for families.”
“The bottom line: President Biden wakes up every day working and rooting for the American people. Donald Trump spends every day worried about himself,” she added.
