Donald Trump Says He Hopes US Economy Crashes This Year

Donald Trump has said he hopes the U.S. economy crashes sometime in the next 12 months, rather than after he potentially enters office in 2025.

Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, was speaking in an interview with former Fox News host Lou Dobbs on the conservative platform Lindell TV. The former president said that if he wins the 2024 election against President Joe Biden, then he does not want his second term in the White House to be reminiscent of Herbert Hoover's presidency.

Hoover's first year in office coincided with the major stock market crash of 1929, which led to the Great Depression. Hoover went on to lose the 1932 election in a landslide to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt amid the disastrous fallout of the country's economy.

Trump has frequently criticized the state of the economy during Biden's time in office, which has seen record levels of inflation and gas prices. Trump suggested that while the economy is now improving, including a recent stronger-than-expected job growth report, this is the result of work his administration carried out.

"We have an economy that's so fragile and the only reason it's running now is it's running off the fumes of what we did," Trump said.

"When there's a crash, I hope it's going to be during this next 12 months because I don't want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president—I just don't want to be Herbert Hoover."

A clip of the remarks was posted on X, formerly Twitter, by the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign account, which frequently uses Trump's own words against him.

"Trump says he hopes the economy crashes so he can blame President Biden," the account wrote while sharing the comments.

Other Democratic figures also condemned Trump for saying he hopes the U.S. economy crashes before he potentially enters office in January 2025.

"The head of the Republican Party wants you to lose your job and the economy to collapse because he thinks it will help him," New Jersey congressman Bill Pascrell posted. "The Republican Party is unfit to govern and does not give a damn about you."

John Kiehne, who is running for Missouri's 2nd Congressional District, added: "Why would someone support a man who wants to see our country crash? I literally say a little prayer every day that Republican politicians stop playing politics and actually work to serve their constituents. If you wish ill upon my family, my community, and my country, you're my enemy."

Jeff Hudson, a popular Trump critic on X, wrote: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe presidential candidates should want America to be in the best shape possible, no matter if they're elected or not."

Trump's office has been contacted for comment via email.

Elsewhere in his interview with Dobbs, Trump suggested that gas prices in the U.S. had reached $8 a gallon, a claim which was debunked by an industry expert.

Trump said that when he was in the White House "you had gasoline selling for less than $2 and now you have it at $5, $6, $7 and even $8 a gallon, adding "by contrast, under the Trump leadership, my leadership, inflation was nonexistent, and we had gasoline down to $1.87 a gallon."

After a clip of the comments was posted on social media, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, an app that allows users to find the cheapest gas in the country, said that the platform's database of more than 150,000 gas stations could not find "one single station" where it is being sold at $8 per gallon.

"Meanwhile, over 50% of gas stations have gasoline priced at $2.89/gal or less today," he added.