Stock Market Crashes Down on Clueless Joe

CLAY: We are talking about the biggest story that is going on right now anywhere in the world, and it is Joe Biden having to come to grips with the biggest stock market drop that he has seen in his entire tenure.

Buck Sexton, I am reading from the Wall Street Journal article about this. It says, “The stock market moves were reminiscent of trading patterns that prevailed in the early days of the pandemic. Investors sold shares of companies directly affected by restrictions on movement and business while buying government bonds and stocks that stood to benefit from renewed lockdowns. American Airlines, United Airlines, Cruise operator Carnival all saw their stock prices drop substantially. Stocks that climbed on Monday, Kroger,” which we all remember, Etsy, which is an online marketplace,” and Peloton. And the big question now, is are we — I hate to say it, Buck. I really do. Are we stumbling once more into March of 2020 all over again?

BUCK: I don’t think so. I think it’s gonna be short-lived with this stock market if you’re — at least the plunge that we’re seeing because this is right now it’s panic driven. This is panic selling at some level, and it’s very unlikely, I think it’s almost impossible to go back to where we were at that phase. The market is an indicator of fear in this moment. And, as we know, if you actually believe what the market was telling us back in March of 2020, if people thought, oh, my gosh. You know, the end is near, that was the wrong attitude. Because the market ended up having a huge rally and doing incredible well. Selling in March of 2020, well, at least if you’re a long-term investor, was not the right move.

What we are seeing is I think a sense of economic anxiety that is reflected in the market right now, the stock market, but it’s reflected also from the Biden administration, which is why he gave a speech today in which he tried to tell everybody that things are better than you think they are. “Everything is going great. Everything is working according to plan.”

CLAY: Well, what I was just gonna say, Buck, is usually you don’t give a speech during the time when the stock market is open. That’s been a long time, you know, sort of tried and true political mechanism. Because if the stock market goes down while you are talking, then a lot of people use it as sort of a sign of your impotence. And that’s exactly what happened with Joe Biden speaking earlier today. Stock market went down even more after he talked.

BUCK: Amazing when you think about how the sales pitch for Biden — what was it, in the summer of 2020 — was that he would unite America, he would calm things down, and he would help the middle class afford stuff like gas and housing and groceries. Remember that?

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BUCK: An economy that’s from the bottom up and the middle out, right? I mean, now I would want to say it’s hilarious, but it’s also deeply depressing that that was the sales pitch for Biden. Because on every front so far — we haven’t even talked about today, and we should. We should get into the fact that the latest numbers for illegal crossings at the border, 20-year high last month. We’ve been discussing how it’s a 20-year high in the aggregate, Clay, since January for this year, but last month alone for the month — of month of June in 2021, the highest legal crossing — we’ve had the most open border we’ve ever had, we have an economy — right now actually the stock market’s looking a little shaky but also job openings that aren’t filled. You have a three plus trillion-dollar budget bill they want to get through. Inflation is very real. And Biden’s going around trying to tell everybody that things are actually just fine. That somehow this is all going according to plan, which I find at some level just to look and hard to imagine that he really says this stuff, really believes this stuff. But this is what we’re being told; it’s all gonna be okay.

CLAY: What’s such a challenge about this, in general, we just are sitting in a really precarious spot. And, Buck, you and I were talking about this off air. And certainly it’s a conversation we’re gonna have a lot of on air as well. Is this stock market sell-off a reflection of increased fear. We said there’s two different paths, right? This could be a blip, or this is a sign that the vaccines may not be as effective as we had hoped. And you can use some of the data to tell either side of the story right now.

BUCK: Here’s Biden from the speech that was right before we came on air today. Biden was trying to tell everybody about how the economy’s going and it’s just find.

BIDEN: As demand returns there’s gonna be global supply chain challenges. We’ve seen that in semiconductors, which are used in automobiles. That global shortage has slowed vehicle production, creating a temporary spike in car prices. That’s a real challenge. Lumber prices are another example. They spiked early in our recovery. But in recent weeks they began to fall. They’ve fallen by more than 50%. And the hospitality industry, prices are returning to where they used to be. I want to be clear. My administration understands that if we were to ever experience unchecked inflation over the long term, that would pose a real challenge to our economy. It’s why we’re confident that isn’t what we’re seeing today. We’re gonna remain vigilant about any response that is needed.

BUCK: You trust Joe Biden to be the steward of this economy? No. No.

CLAY: Should anyone?

BUCK: No.

CLAY: No one should. I mean, look. You could dislike Donald Trump on many different levels. And I understand people who said, hey, he tweets too much, he’s frustrating to me, he leaves himself open to counterattack. I understand all those criticisms. There are people out there listening to us right now who voted for Donald Trump in spite of all those things.

But you knew that on the economy Trump knew what he was talking about from a business perspective. I don’t believe that Joe Biden has any real knowledge of business or the economy. Because I don’t think he’s ever had to have a real job where he had to sit down and make a payroll or prove that he could have a profit.

BUCK: The only jobs he’s created are the money-laundering scheme for his son with the $500,000 paintings that people are buying, anonymously, by the way.

CLAY: Which is an unbelievable story.

BUCK: So he’s good at that.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Joe Biden knows how to get the grift going real well for Biden family members. Of course the corporate Democrat media doesn’t want to touch that.

Let’s look at where they really are right now. The promise of Biden, the fundamental, the central promise of the Biden campaign into the presidency was that things would go back to normal, that he would steer us out of the pandemic. Today it feels like everything else — crime, awful. Border, awful. Inflation going up. You look at all these things, if on top of that their covid plan, their vaccination stuff, all the things that they have been pushing from the White House down — and I don’t mean just vaccination in general but I mean their, “Oh, we’re the great stewards of getting needles into people’s arms and we’re gonna convince everybody and the messaging around it.” Clay, if we go back into it, I mean, you think that we’re heading back into full-on lockdowns.

CLAY: That is what I’m afraid of, Buck.

BUCK: If we head there, the Biden administration in year one is a massive and catastrophic and entirely predictable failure. And that’s what I think people in D.C. are seeing.

CLAY: But do you know what will happen?

BUCK: Are they gonna blame Trump?

CLAY: That is what is going to happen. Their game plan is going to shift from, “Hey, we’re going to return to normalcy” to “We can’t return to normalcy because of Trump.”

This is important, because I want to be honest with our audience. We’re talking about data on the ground as it exists right now, right? If you look at the numbers in England, the overall number of covid infections today, as they are opening up England, are approaching the all-time high for covid infections that they have ever seen. I tweeted out a graphic @ClayTravis. You can go look at this yourself.

The Dow is down over 750 points and Peloton, one of the best performing stars of the lockdown, is up big. What’s going on? Wall Street is trying to figure out how England, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, is closing in on an all time high in covid cases. pic.twitter.com/RaUCuLg4N7

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 19, 2021

That is the data, right? Now, data does not necessarily mean that we know a hundred percent what the cause of that is, right? It could be — it could be — and I hope this is the case — that we’re just doing a better job than England of testing and that the vast majority of those people who are testing positive, it’s the equivalent of a cold and we’re not gonna see a rise in hospitalization and we’re not groans a rise in death. We won’t know because that sort of data follows by about a month.

If we do, then my concern, Buck, is, it’s evidence that there’s something really going awry in our response that the narrative of, “Hey, if we get enough people vaccinated, covid’s just gonna a week go away.” The evidence suggests that that’s just not true. Why that would be, I hope that we’re gonna have less hospitalization and less death. But I’m apprehensive that people are gonna see this data, Buck, that all the people out there who have been supporting lockdowns are gonna say, you know what this means, double mask, triple mask, we gotta shut down schools again in the blue states, we’ve got to shut down businesses. We need targeted lockdowns to stop the spread of covid. My concern is that by the fall and winter of 2021 we could be seeing a replay of what happened in March of 2020 last year.

BUCK: I think there’s a concern among the Biden administration specifically, in addition to all the things you’re laying out when it comes to covid, that the agenda is stalled. The summer is starting to feel like it’s already passing us by here. We’re gonna be in recess soon. What is the Biden agenda? What have they accomplished? What are they do? What have the Democrats doing with, remember, the House, the Senate, and the presidency, for all intents and purposes. I mean, I know the Senate is 50-50 technically, but they can get things through by a tie-break from Kamala. What have they managed to do?

And if they give up the power, if they give up the authority they have over our lives that’s rooted in this covid state, what are they gonna be able to accomplish? What, then, becomes the reason for having Democrats in charge? It’s not the booming economy. And let’s all be very clear. Everyone who is looking at the end of covid was thinking that the economy would be a rocket ship.

CLAY: Roaring Twenties.

BUCK: An artificial lockdown, and we’re out of that — I’m sorry — artificial recession. The lockdown, obviously, was very real and made by them. Now we’re at that point where they’re starting to tell us, well, “Yeah, inflation’s real. Yeah, jobs haven’t come back as quickly as we wanted.” What’s the point of having Democrats in char? What is the upside of Democrats running things compared to where we were? I know Democrats will say, “Oh, ’cause Trump is an insurrectionist and the worst thing since the Civil War.” They’re gonna talk crazy talk no matter what. But for the persuadable, for independents?

CLAY: It’s a great point, Buck. And also, remember this. They used covid as the rock to try and drown Donald Trump. He couldn’t escape it. Covid is theirs now. And just as Trump couldn’t escape covid, we may have Joe Biden a/k/a Jimmy Carter 2.0 caught up in the same mess.