Trump said if he's impeached, 'the market would crash' and 'everybody would be poor.' Don't bet on it.

Trump talks impeachment
(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/Fox News)

President Trump gave himself an A+ for his job performance in a friendly interview with Fox & Friends' Ainsley Earhardt broadcast Thursday, and he thought so highly of his governing skills, he turned them into a novel argument against impeachment. "I don't know how you can impeach somebody who's done a great job," he said. "I'll tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor, because without this thinking," he added, pointing to his head, "you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe, in reverse."

On CNNMoney, Paula Newton disagreed with that assessment, and she got backup from New York Stock Exchange floor trader Peter Tuchman.

See more

Historically, Axios notes, "stocks continued to rise during and after Bill Clinton's impeachment, which occurred a bit earlier in a long bull market than where we're at today. Stocks fell when Richard Nixon resigned, but markets were reacting to a confluence of other events like a global oil crisis."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Stock Trader's Almanac researcher Christopher Mistral told Axios that the markets haven't flinched at the news of Paul Manafort's conviction or Michael Cohen's guilty pleas, and "because impeachment of Trump has been talked about for so long I would not expect it to not have any real impact on the market even if it does happen." Vice President Mike Pence "would become president and the majority of the policies that Trump has put in place would stay in place," he added. It's also worth noting that only 54 percent Americans own any stock at all, including through mutual funds or 401(k)s, according to a 2017 Gallup report, and "the richest 10 percent of households controlled 84 percent of the total value of these stocks in 2016," New York University economist Edward Wolff wrote in a 2017 study.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.