Wilbur Ross has had a rough month. In late June, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could not add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, rendering a year of work trying to gerrymander electoral maps in Republicans’ favor for naught. Last week, a damning report from Politico revealed that the Commerce Department, under Ross’s leadership, is “a disaster.” Data from his own team showed that Donald Trump had not, in fact, ushered in an era of “historic” economic growth. People keep trying to hold meetings during his naps! So by the time Friday rolled around, the octogenarian cabinet member was in a mood.

During an interview on Fox Business, anchor Charles Payne asked Ross about the growing consensus that a recession is on the horizon. “There’s a research report out from Zillow where they go with their agents and analysts and they think we will have a recession next year. What do you make of that?” Payne asked Ross. To which the administration’s resident cartoon villain responded: “The enemy keeps postponing when the recession’s going to come,” referring to the Democratic Party. “They are dying to have a recession. They can’t bear going into next year’s election with the economy the way that it is.” According to Ross, though, a recession ain’t gonna happen, particularly if Congress passes Trump’s trade deal with Canada and Mexico. And if that doesn’t happen, that’ll be Democrats’ fault, too. “You get USMCA through, that’s a half a point or thereabouts on the economy,” Ross said. “If they do hold off and don’t give it, it’s a wonderful campaign issue because they would clearly be starving the U.S. economy.”

The administration, of course, has been workshopping ways to blame Democrats for a Trump-induced recession, should one arise before the 2020 election, for some time now. Last January the president claimed that 2018—as in, his second full year in office—was the worst year for the Dow Jones and S&P 500 since 2008 because Democrats had won the House in November (they weren’t sworn in until January, but never mind you that). Nowhere was there any mention of a pointless government shutdown, an ongoing trade war with China, or constant bashing of the Federal Reserve, all of which have terrified investors. As the Washington Post noted in January, “statistically speaking, given how long the economy has been growing, a recession is overdue—and the eventual collapse may bear Trump’s fingerprints. After all, his new trade barriers have lifted manufacturing costs, closed off markets and clouded the future for American firms with global supply chains.” And “even if Trump isn’t the direct cause of the next recession, he’s likely to make it so, so much worse,” by, among other things, adding trillions to the deficit over the next decade thanks to ill-timed tax cuts and trying to discredit the Federal Reserve. Also, batshittery like this, which, incidentally, all went down in the span of a single afternoon:

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Trump threatens to tax French wine, again