President Biden on Thursday said that former President Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to the economy, citing his political rival’s comments that he expects the U.S. economy to crash.
“Did you hear he wants to see the stock market crash?” Biden said Thursday during remarks in Raleigh, N.C. “We’re doing well, he’s acknowledging by that, we’re doing pretty damn well economically and we’re getting better. He wants to see the stock market crash. You know why? He doesn’t want to be the next Herbert Hoover.”
“He’s already Hoover,” the president continued. “Some of the things he says— well, I’m not getting started. But look, frankly, to put it very politely, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Trump recently said that if there is an economic crash, he hopes it is before he would take office in January 2025, if reelected, and said he doesn’t want to be known as a Hoover. Former President Hoover had been in office for just a few months when the stock market crashed in 1929, triggering the Great Depression.
Biden has brought up in numerous speeches, including the most recent one, that Trump is one of two presidents — along with Hoover — who left office with fewer jobs than when he entered.
“My predecessor likes to say, America is a failing nation. In my faith, bless me father for he has sinned,” Biden said, giving himself the sign of the cross. “I mean, come on. A failing nation?”
He also argued that under the Trump administration, public investment in infrastructure and education shrunk and factories closed.
Biden used the speech as a platform to tout his own economic agenda and announce $82 million in new investments to connect homes and businesses in the Tar Heel State to high-speed internet.
North Carolina is a critical battleground state that Trump won in 2020, and in 2016, against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Biden campaign recently beefed up its operations in the state, as well as other battleground states. Vice President Harris traveled to North Carolina last week to discuss combating gun violence.
