OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld defended and explained comments former President Donald Trump made last week about a “crashing economy” that he said left-wing commentators and the Biden White House intentionally took out of context.
“The Five” co-host’s remarks came after Democrats ripped into Trump for saying he believes the U.S. economy is headed for a crash under President Biden’s policies and, if so, it happens before the November election.
Trump said during an interview with Lou Dobbs that aired Monday on a website founded by MyPillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell: “And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during these next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.”
The 31st president lost his re-election bid in 1932 to Democratic nominee Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the stock market crashed in October 1929, which led to the Great Depression.
Trump added that he believes the economy is fragile and that “the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did.”
But his remarks set off a firestorm among leftist commentators and Democrats who claimed he was hoping for an economic calamity.
“When it comes to a commander-in-chief’s duty, they’re not supposed to wish for an economic downturn,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters after the remarks. “They’re supposed to put the American people first; that is what the commander-in-chief is supposed to do. They’re not supposed to hope that American families suffer.”
Gutfeld explained that wasn’t at all what Trump said.
“He — what Trump said is if the economy bottoms out, I hope it’s before I’m in office. That’s what he said,” Gutfeld noted. “But the media ran with it saying, like, he wants the economy to crumble.
“Let me translate this so the media understands it, the people who work in cable news. If The Five ever gets a low rating, and I’m not saying it will, I don’t want to be on that show! Right? I don’t want to be on that show,” Gutfeld explained.
“Now, I didn’t say when The Five gets a low rating because it never does, but if it does, I don’t want to be on the show. Does that sink into Joy Reid’s head now? ‘Oh, I get it. He was saying he didn’t want — he doesn’t want it to happen, but if it does, before he becomes president. Now I understand,'” Gutfeld added.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s ongoing prosecution of Trump is turning him into the ‘Nelson Mandela of America’ — a wrongly persecuted martyr of monumental proportions that could propel him back into the White House, according to a pollster.
“Nearly 7 in 10 voters, or 69%, believe that politics ‘has played’ a role in the four indictments against Trump, according to a new survey shared with Secrets,” the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard wrote last week.
Bedard added: “Voters are angered at what they see as Democratic strong-arm tactics to take out America’s most popular politician with legal and political tactics and believe that President Joe Biden and his Justice Department are behind it.”
Though the White House continues to spin Biden’s economic policies, in fact, Americans have been struggling under record-high inflation, food and gas prices, and a dramatic increase in the cost of housing and rent, as well as skyrocketing interest rates.
“As of November 2023, 62% of consumers relied on their next paycheck to cover their monthly financial outflows, the PYMNTS and LendingClub survey said. These consumers also own nearly 60% of the credit cards in the U.S. Moreover, 80% of paycheck-to-paycheck consumers own at least two credit cards on average,” Fox Business reported last month.
“The report also said that paycheck-to-paycheck cardholders are more than twice as likely as those not living paycheck-to-paycheck to carry a credit card balance over to the following month. Close to one-third said they reached their credit card limit, an average of $9,200, at least occasionally in the last year,” the outlet reported, citing the data.
U.S. consumers have accumulated an additional $48 billion in credit card debt during the third quarter of 2023, bringing the total owed to $1.08 trillion, as noted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in a recent analysis of household debt.
