Donald Trump says he believes the U.S. economy is going to “crash.” In fact, he wants it to do just that—as long as it happens soon. In a Monday interview on Lindell TV (an online program created, hosted, and funded by noted conspiracy theorist and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell), the former president said he didn’t want to be compared to Herbert Hoover, who took office at the start of the Great Depression in 1929, if he wins another term in the White House.
“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, CNN first reported.
In the past, Herbert Hoover was routinely blamed for the Great Depression, despite taking office less than a year before the stock market crash of 1929 struck, signaling the beginning of an era of economic pain for the U.S. Since the 1970s, however, historians and economists have viewed Hoover in a different light. Although some scholars still criticize him for refusing to offer large-scale relief programs that would have helped Americans cope with the Great Depression, his actions after the 1929 stock market crash—and his policies throughout his presidency—have been lauded by some in hindsight.
The New York Times argued in a 1930 article that "no one in his place could have done more" to fix the stock market’s long-brewing crisis, as Stanford Magazine explained in a 1999 article. And an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt admitted in the 1930s that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started,” arguing “his policies were substantially correct."
Still, no president wants to take office when the economy is struggling. Trump has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden’s economic policies during the run-up to the Republican primaries, where Trump is the current front-runner. In the interview with Lindell, he claimed Biden's economy was currently “running off the fumes” of his administration.
Lindell TV airs on the FrankSpeech network, which was also created by Lindell. He claims to have put $12 million into its creation and says it averages 4 million viewers per month. Beyond his own show, the network is also home to Lou Dobbs, who was fired by Fox News three years ago in the wake of a $2.7 billion defamation suit from the voting technology company Smartmatic.
Despite Trump’s comments, the economy has shown signs of strength recently, and Wall Street has begun to believe that a soft landing—where inflation fades without rising interest rates sparking a job-killing recession—is not only possible, but likely.
Recent economic data, including the December jobs and consumer spending reports, have been better than expected. And after a brutal 2022, the S&P 500 finished 2023 up roughly 24%. For its part, the White House, in a statement to CNN, chastised Trump for his comments, saying, “A commander-in-chief’s duty is to always put the American people first; never to hope that hardworking families suffer economic pain for their own political benefit.”
