It was just five years ago when Donald Trumpworried about a re-election race he would ultimately lose, warned that his defeat would lead to economic ruin. In fact, with just a couple of weeks remaining before Election Day, the two major-party nominees faced off in their final debate, which included a rather specific prediction.

“They say the stock market will rule if I’m elected,” Trump saidfailing to identify who “they” might be. He added, in reference to Joe Biden: “If he’s elected, the stock market will crash.”

As it turns out, the Republican had the right concerns, but the wrong presidents. The major Wall Street indexes fared quite well throughout Biden’s term in the White House. Unfortunately for everyone, the Democrat’s Republican successor can’t say the same. NBC News reported:

We are not, of course, talking about a one-day sell-off. On the contrary, a day earlier — the day the White House unveiled its highly controversial policy on trade tariffs — the S&P had its worst day since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Nasdaq Composite is now down 22% from its high in December, and the S&P 500 is about 17% off its high in February.

Amid the downturn, the president — who left the White House for a Saudi-backed golf event in Florida — wrote to his social media platform“MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”

Evidently, that didn’t make investors feel any better.

To be sure, markets can fluctuate for all sorts of reasons, many of which are often outside the control of any one administration. But that’s precisely what makes the latest downturn so politically potent: You don’t have to be a financial genius to draw a straight line between stock market turmoil, Trump’s agenda and his public rhetoric.

Indeed, as the major indexes sink, it’s painfully obvious that in this game of “Clue,” it was the president, in the Oval Office, with his trade tariffs and layoffs.

Asked a month ago about the market losses that have happened after he returned to the White House, the president blamed “globalist countries” and “globalists that see how rich our country’s going to be and they don’t like it.” That was gibberish at the time, and it’s noticeably worse now.

But stepping back, the problem isn’t just that Trump is responsible for massive Wall Street losses, it’s also the fact that he promised to deliver the opposite results.

When markets soared during Biden’s presidency, the Republican repeatedly insisted that the major indexes were only up because investors expected Trump to return to the White House. It was part of a broader push: Trump told Americans to see the stock market as the one true metric that mattered more than any other.

“If [then-Vice President Kamala] Harris wins this election, the result will be a Kamala economic crash. … A 1929-style depression,” the Republican declared in August. “When I win the election, we will immediately begin a brand new Trump economic boom.”

In hindsight, perhaps “immediately” was the wrong choice of words.

Months later, as his inauguration neared, Trump vowed a Wall Street boomand as NBC News recently reportedthe rhetorical push continued as the president’s second term got underway.

Just 18 days after declaring, “The stock market is going to be great,” Trump appeared on Fox News and said: “You can’t really watch the stock market.”

The problem, of course, is that we can watch the stock market; we can recognize who’s responsible for these massive losses; and we can’t help but notice that Trump is golfing instead of trying to clean up his mess.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Donald Trump, self-proclaimed “protector” of womenissued a proclamation Thursday acknowledging Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, in which he leveled a bigoted attack against undocumented migrants.

The announcement began:

The rest of the screed offered more of the same.

Literally the only true statement in that quoted section is that April is in fact Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. There has not been an “invasion” of immigrants through our southern border. And despite Trump’s efforts to convince the public otherwise, studies have repeatedly shown immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.

It’s perhaps not surprising that the president is less interested in bringing awareness to sexual assaults perpetrated by American citizens. Trump himself (as you likely know) was found liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in a civil trial in 2023. He famously boasted about groping women without their consent.

Trump was once an associate of Jeffrey Epsteinthe late convicted sex offender (but he has never been implicated in any allegations). To serve as labor secretary in his first administration, Trump named Alex Acostathe former U.S. attorney who oversaw a controversial plea deal for Epstein in a child sex abuse case. Trump also publicly sent well-wishes to Ghislaine MaxwellEpstein’s co-defendant in his child sex trafficking case, as she fought the charges in 2020.

Three of the men Trump selected for Cabinet positions this year previously faced accusations of sexual assault (two denied any wrongdoing; the third apologized to the woman via text message). Multiple Jan. 6 insurrectionists he pardoned had prior convictions for sexual assault. And some of the insurrectionists he pardoned have since been charged with sexual assault or soliciting a minor in connection with incidents alleged to have occurred before the insurrection. And, according to reporting from the Financial Times and The TimesTrump’s administration had a hand in helping accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate return to the U.S. after the administration allegedly pressured Romanian officials to loosen travel restrictions for Tate and his brother.

So Trump’s proclamation Thursday — ostensibly “to support survivors of sexual assault” — tracks with his and his administration’s overtly racist policies. At the same time, it refuses any “awareness” of his own history of sexual abuse or the sexual misconduct alleged against those in his inner circle.

No one needs Trump to proclaim anything in support of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month — unless it’s an apology.

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”

President Donald Trump is running headlong into his radical reimagining of America — one in which freedom of speech, basic civil liberties and equal protection under the law are privileges to be bestowed by the state, rather than inalienable rights for everyone. At the same time, he’s also made the country less safe and the government less accountable to the people.

Trump does not believe he is constrained by the law, and the Supreme Court seems to agree, having granted the president immunity for almost any official action.

In less than three months, the president and his administration have fired inspectors generalused the threat of government sanctions to compel law firms and universities into making payoffs and curricula changeslaunched speech-chilling investigations into media companiesequated protests against a foreign government’s war (a war that’s unpopular even among that government’s own citizens) with support for terrorismand deported, without due processinnocent people present in the U.S. legally. And that’s hardly a comprehensive summary.

It seems like a lifetime ago, but it has been barely more than two months since Trump pardoned nearly every Jan. 6 rioter — including those who attacked police and threatened to murder the vice president, and the leaders of neo-fascist militant groups who argued in court that Trump incited the assault on the Capitol.

Trump might be obsessed with projecting what he views as “strength,” but in an incredibly short period of time, he’s made America increasingly vulnerable to terror and cyber attacksviruses that could launch another pandemic and tanked millions of people’s retirement funds.

Beginning in the summer of 2015, when it was clear that Trump’s candidacy was not a fluke and that he could win the 2016 Republican nomination, I anxiously wondered for years what Trump would do in a “Black Swan” situation, like a major terror attack. I don’t really wonder anymore — because he’s already doing it.

The New York Times and The Handbasket reported this week that Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a cable to diplomats ordering them to scrutinize visa applicants’ social media for any criticism of the U.S. and Israel. “This may be evident in conduct that bears a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles). Or it may be evident in advocacy or sympathy for foreign terrorist organizations. All of these matters may open lines of inquiry regarding the applicant’s credibility and purpose of travel,” the cable reportedly reads.

We’re only weeks removed from the Trump administration using a very loose definition of “support for Hamas” as a pretext for deportations of legal immigrants. But does the administration also view “sympathy” for Gazan civilians — suffering in unspeakable conditions as a result of the Israel-Hamas war — or criticism of the Israeli government to be “advocacy or sympathy for foreign terrorist organizations”? The answer is almost certainly: yes.

How about a legal permanent resident, not a pro-Palestinian activist, expressing criticism of Trump and his administration? Would that constitute “a hostile attitude toward U.S. citizens or U.S. culture (including government, institutions, or founding principles)”? Again, almost certainly: yes.

Presumably, Trump supporters critical of the so-called Deep State — composed of U.S. government and institutions — would receive a pass. The same likely goes for MAGA thought leaders who reject some of America’s founding principles — like its opposition to monarchy.

We have plenty of reason for concern that a Trump-led government might exploit the trauma and chaos of a crisis to deny American citizens their rights.

Trump’s deputy chief of policy, Stephen Miller, defended the administration’s position on denying due process to immigrants on Fox News earlier this week: “They have the temerity to say that every single invader should get their own individual judicial trial before they are deported. One at a time, each one gets a one million-dollar trial in front of a communist judge to decide whether or not we can send them home. How about, ‘Hell no.’”

But due process doesn’t necessarily mean the accused stands trial. It does mean the government has to at least give you the opportunity to say something like, “I’m not a violent gang member! I’m a law-abiding, tax-paying, legal resident with a family here.” And it means agents of the state have to actually check out that claim before they deprive you of your civil rights.

Trump — a convicted felon whose lawyers used his rights to due process to drag out legal proceedings long enough for the indictments to become moot by his re-election — leads an administration that conducts arrests and deportations without due process and ignores court orders. His administration is already claiming war powers under the Alien Enemies Acteven though we are not at war.

But if this country were hit by a major attack, we have no reason to expect the Trump administration will consider itself restrained by the Constitution, or that “suspects” will be afforded due process. We do, however, have plenty of reason for concern that a Trump-led government might exploit the trauma and chaos of a crisis to deny American citizens their rights, if they’re deemed “the enemy” by this rogue administration.

Trump does not believe he is constrained by the law, and the Supreme Court seems to agree, having granted the president immunity for almost any official action. He and his allies are already musing about ignoring the Constitution and pursuing a third term in the White House. Think about that kind of unchecked power being used after a terror attack. A grieving, frightened populace could be frightened into surrendering whatever civil liberties they have left. And even if they don’t, Trump could potentially suspend them anyway — just as he is now, when we’re not at war.

As unsettling as the Trump administration’s actions have been, it has provided a helpful reminder that civil liberties, due process and free speech are meant to apply to all Americans —  and everyone else here legally.

It’s equally instructive to watch a reactionary administration — whose members absurdly cosplay as “free speech warriors” — mimic the same excesses of left-wing activists and politicians who advocated for the government and other authorities to be the arbiters of “hate speech” and “disinformation.” You can replace those words with “terrorist sympathies,” but the impulse is the same. The censor is certain they possess the absolute truth.

To be very clear, the left-wing campus “cancel culture” of roughly the past decade cannot remotely be conflated with what the Trump administration is doing. While many expressions of recent progressive campus activism have been counterproductive, illiberal and hypocritical, left-wing cancel culture never sent masked federal agents in plainclothes to abduct a grad student off a city street in broad daylight over an op-ed protesting a foreign government.

Authentic free speech and civil liberties advocates have consistently tried to remind Americans that the right to express what some people might consider to be truly horrible things is the entire point of free speech. Popular speech needs no protections. Unpopular speech does. And right now, the government has a frighteningly overbroad view of what speech it deems unacceptable. It also doesn’t believe it’s constrained by the law or the courts or distinctions between war and peacetime.

Imagining what this administration would do in the event of an actual act of war should chill the blood of anyone paying attention. The Trump administration is cancel culture with a secret police force and unlimited power.

Anthony L. Fisher

Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and writer for BLN Daily. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider.