Trump issues bizarre complaint about “so-called rich guys” doing “barely legal” big betting
For the past few days, President Trump has been obsessing over everything and anything that will take attention away from his continual bungling of the COVID-19 pandemic. For days now, his Twitter feed has consisted almost entirely of tweets and retweets about the contrived and nonexistent “Obamagate” scandal that the president and his cronies are trying to force into the news cycle, the rate of digital messaging ebbing and flowing with the tides of the FOX News programming schedule.
On Wednesday, the President took a break from promoting conspiracy theories to complain about something that he had doubtlessly seen on television but left the rest of us scratching our heads in confusion. Taking aim at “so-called rich guys” (a classic example of Trump projection, since he himself is widely believed to be lying about his networth), the president appeared to complain about the methods of market manipulation that he himself uses on a regular basis before wondering if it was “barely legal?”
When the so-called “rich guys” speak negatively about the market, you must always remember that some are betting big against it, and make a lot of money if it goes down. Then they go positive, get big publicity, and make it going up. They get you both ways. Barely legal?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2020
Trump has used his Twitter account to influence the markets on multiple occasions during his presidency, most notably wiping a billion dollars off the stock price of Boeing in 2016 with a single complaint on social media.
It appears in this case that he is accusing the unknown “so-called rich guys” of deliberately souring confidence in the markets and making the economy look weaker before changing their tune and making “the big line go up” as the memes say.
The president has clung to the strong economy he inherited from President Obama and tried to claim it as his own; now that it’s been demolished by the ravages of coronavirus, he’s been desperately trying to convince the nation that everything is fine and we’re going to “transition to greatness” once again.
It seems that he doesn’t appreciate the manipulations of the “so-called rich guys” messing with his narrative.
