Credit
Tom Brenner/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — As America’s stock markets have reached record highs, they have had few louder cheerleaders than President Trump.
“Highest Stock Market EVER,” he said on Twitter on Monday.
Before the stock exchanges’ opening bell on Tuesday, Mr. Trump pointed out in a tweet that the Dow Jones industrial index’s recent surge started just after he was elected. (He also lamented, incorrectly, that the press was downplaying that fact: “Mainstream media seldom mentions!”)
And on Thursday, Mr. Trump made clear that he thinks he deserves credit for the latest record high, tweeting, “That doesn’t just happen!”
Business is looking better than ever with business enthusiasm at record levels. Stock Market at an all-time high. That doesn’t just happen!
—
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Aug. 3, 2017
The Dow Jones average closed at another record high Thursday. But it was not long ago that Mr. Trump, as a presidential candidate bent on casting the economy as a disaster, said that the stock market was a bubble that should make investors wary.
‘They’ll get wiped out’
In the early days of his candidacy, Mr. Trump assailed the economic recovery as a mirage and mused about a potential conspiracy that was being plotted between Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, and President Barack Obama. The theory was that she was keeping interest rates low so that the president would not leave office as another recession began.
“They worked all their lives to save and now what happens is they’re being forced into an inflated stock market and at some point they’ll get wiped out,” Mr. Trump told The Hill in October 2015 regarding American workers.
