Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) steered clear of criticizing Donald Trump on Friday when confronted on CNN about the stock market free fall happening on the president’s watch.
“Sir, is this Donald Trump’s economy now?” CNN’s Kasie Hunt bluntly asked.
“Well, I don’t know that I’d call it that,” Burchett replied.
Hunt swiftly raised her eyebrows after hearing the claim, “Really?”
Burchett proceeded to ask whether CNN would use the term “Donald Trump’s economy” when the now-tumbling stock market “turns around,” parroting the president’s prediction that the economy will eventually “boom” after a “minor disturbance” caused by his sweeping tariffs.
He added that he didn’t recall the network hosting panels “railing” on President Joe Biden’s economy, a claim that Hunt shut down by noting that former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield was sitting next to her off camera.
“She was in a number of tough situations where we talked plenty about those issues,” said Hunt of Bedingfield, a CNN analyst.
After seconds of crosstalk, Hunt noted that Trump has recently tied his predecessor to the state of the economy, claiming that he inherited an “economic catastrophe” and “inflation nightmare” from Biden.
At the end of Biden’s presidency, experts said the economy — broadly speaking — was in a good place.
“Voters are willing to give new presidents the benefit of the doubt in those circumstances. Do you really not see yesterday as a line in the sand before he could argue it was Biden’s and now he has to — whatever happens good or bad — own that?” she asked of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement.
Burchett, in response, declared that “everybody knew” the economy was going to “take a hit.”
“But economists will tell you can stack up a group that’ll say no and the other ones will say yes, that the market is not really a good indicator,” he claimed.
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Trump himself often used a booming stock market to tout his handling of the economy in his first term but he’s been notably quiet in his current administration, The New York Times noted early last month.
“We’ve had the best stock market which is — whether you like stock market or not, it’s a leading indicator, the all-time leading indicator,” he told reporters outside Air Force One in 2020.