Once again, America's journalists are outraged at Donald Trump for saying something a normal politician shouldn't say.
"We have an economy that's so fragile, and the only reason it's running now is it's running off the fumes of what we did," Trump said during an interview with Lou Dobbs that aired Monday. "And 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."
Great golly! He said what? Journalists pounced and seized on Trump's remarks, writing articles with slightly different versions of this Daily Beast headline: "Trump Says He WANTS the Economy to Crash Because It Will Hurt Biden."
Counterpoint: Who f—ing cares? Of course Trump wants the economy to crash if it hurts Joe Biden and helps him win. Most politicians, especially the ones crazy enough to think they should be in charge of the entire country, would agree. Trump is not like most politicians, because they would never say it out loud. They'd just spout a bunch of insincere bullshit about "wanting what's best for the American people."
This is part of Trump's appeal. American voters understand that politicians are full of insincere bullshit. They pretend they aren't, but they definitely are. Trump doesn't even bother to pretend. He just wants to win. So do the Democrats, obviously. They would never admit it in public, but of course they're happy that COVID-19 leaked out of some Chinese lab, killed millions of people, and wreaked havoc on our nation's schoolchildren. It almost certainly cost Trump the election, and no honest Democrat would say it wasn't worth it.
If given the opportunity to go back in time and stop the pandemic from happening, knowing Trump would coast to reelection on the back of a surging economy, then of course they'd say no. The same goes for Hurricane Sandy, which likely played a role in Barack Obama's reelection victory over Mitt Romney in 2012. Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews, known for his somewhat Trump-like inability to filter his thoughts, said as much on air.
"I'm so glad we had that storm last week," Matthews said on election night after Obama was declared the winner. "Politically, I should say. Not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics." Indeed. The host apologized the following day. He'd said something journalists aren't supposed to say out loud. That doesn't mean they don't believe it. Of course they do.