White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki threw some shade at Donald Trump when a Fox reporter implied that President Joe Biden doesn’t care about the economy.
“Does the president think it’s a big deal that today the Dow Jones is down, at one point, more than 1100 points?” Fox’s Peter Doocy asked pointedly, referring to the stock market index that took a large dive this morning.
Related: Jen Psaki smacks down Fox reporter who suggested calling COVID “a pandemic of the vaccinated”
“We focus on the trends in the economy, not any one day and any single indicator,” Psaki said before looking at Doocy and adding, “unlike his predecessor, the president does not look at the stock market as a means by which to judge the economy.”
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“I would note that the market is up around 15% compared to when President Biden took office,” she continued, “but our measure of success is how real working families are doing.”
“And we’ve seen a great deal of progress on that front,” she concluded, possibly referring to how the unemployment rate dropped from 6.3% in January 2021 to 3.9% by December of last year.
"Unlike his predecessor, the president does not look at the stock market as a means by which to judge the economy" — Jen Psaki to Peter Doocy pic.twitter.com/GyTTQTr2BY
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2022
Trump faced criticism when he was in the White House due to how he was “obsessed” with the stock market, tweeting about them regularly. If markets were doing well, he would give himself credit.
“With the great vote on Cutting Taxes, this could be a big day for the Stock Market – and YOU!” he tweeted in 2017.
But stock market indexes are far from the only way to measure economic well-being and, as an indicator, focus on the fortunes of wealthier people who are more likely to own more stocks.
