On August 23rd, a Friday, Trump burned the stock markets with an insane Twitter tirade.

Then at the G7 on Monday, he claimed the US had talked with China on the phone and that the Asian nation wanted "badly to make a deal."

Treasury Secretary verified their talks and said in France, "There were discussions that went back and forth , let's leave it at that."

Trump jumped in and said, "Last night and before last night."

That was news to China: a foreign ministry spokesman said he had not heard of a phone call.

Reuters reported, "Hu Xijin, editor of the state-controlled Global Times newspaper, tweeted: “Based on what I know, Chinese and U.S. top negotiators didn’t hold phone talks in recent days."



CNN then reported that presidential aides admitted those calls did happen the way he said they did.

Two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China's vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese.

You mean Donald Trump lied to the entire world? I can't remember a time when an American president made up a story about talking to a foreign power to try and alleviate his own economic mess.

The House needs to investigate this immediately and subpoena Steve Mnuchin as well. Mnuchin is a party to these lies.

As Digby writes, "Someone should really look into who is benefiting from Trump's obvious market manipulations. Somebody is, you can bet on it. And considering his demonstrated corruption and greed, I'm going to guess that once he realized he could move the market with his lies, he's been giving his family and close friends a heads up. Of course, he is. "



Trump made up those 'high-level' Chinese trade-talk calls to boost markets, aides admit https://t.co/GiFa37zscK — Allahpundit (@allahpundit) August 29, 2019

What this describes is, quite literally, market manipulation that constitutes criminal violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: https://t.co/xiit4yl7xv pic.twitter.com/aVMl9f88Zp — George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 29, 2019

If anyone else in government or on Wall Street had done anything like this—if they had issued false information for the purpose of and with the likely and actual effect of making stocks go up—they’d immediately be the subject of investigations by the SEC and the DOJ. https://t.co/LdRvan59ks — George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 30, 2019

For a U.S. president to lie so brazenly is an affront to the Constitution and the Office of the Presidency. I hold the GOP as his co-conspirators in his consistent illegal and outrageous actions.

Manipulating the stock markets is insane, but then so is offering pardons to get his wall built.

What can be next?