Earlier today, Donald Trump caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall hundreds of points after he embarked on one of his most belligerent, unhinged rants to date. Furious that China had (predictably!) retaliated against the US with $75 billion in fresh tariffs, the president—whose election supposedly signaled a “rebirth of capitalism”—had a full on authoritarian meltdown. He tweeted that “our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China,” despite having no power to do so; demanded that they manufacture their products in the United States; claimed that the US is “better off” without the second largest economy in the world; and threatened to respond to China’s aggression with more tariffs this afternoon. Oh, and he also labeled the Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, who Trump himself appointed, an “enemy” of America.

Yet according to Tariff Man, it wasn’t any of these things that caused stocks to plunge:

Funny! It’s hard to say which is scarier: that Trump actually thinks stocks fell off a cliff because a guy who didn’t even make the Democratic debates dropped out of the race, or that he’s making a joke that it could have been anything—and not, say, the fact that he spent the morning tweeting the economy closer to a recession. Fucking with people’s retirements for sport, comedy gold! Get this guy to an open mic night!

“Am I right that Trump sparked a market tanking, and now is making a stupid joke about it? Why would he do that?” asked the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Why indeed!

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