CNN went after Donald Trump for playing golf on Friday while the U.S. markets continue to plummet because of the president’s sweeping tariffs that were imposed on dozens of countries earlier this week.
Although playing golf to blow off steam is not a novelty for Oval Office occupants, host Dana Bash was dumbfounded by how the 78-year-old could even pretend to relax while economic experts reel from the stock market’s active nose-dive.
“The president right now is playing golf,” the Inside Politics anchor said on Friday. “He went to Florida. He’s going to go to a Saudi-backed golf tournament, but he’s playing golf right now.”
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The stock continues its downward spiral on Friday, losing over 3,000 points in two days. The U.S. is also facing retaliatory tariffs, with China already announcing 34 percent tariffs on U.S. goods, which led to the S&P 500 dropping around 4 percent.
Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, declared that Trump’s tariffs “raise risks of faster inflation and slower growth,” the New York Times reported.
“While uncertainty remains elevated, it is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” he told the Times. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”
The president already faced backlash on Thursday when he decided to attend a LIV Gold event at his Miami Doral course instead of presiding over the transfer of the four U.S. soldiers who died in Lithuania.
The CNN host also lambasted the president for the time he “really trashed Joe Biden for playing golf,” adding that the real issue seems to be Trump’s seemingly skewed priorities.
“But, now?!” she said, flabbergasted. “Given what’s happening right now in the world, on world economies, for only one reason—that is because he wanted to launch this trade war. This is a very volatile time because of his policies!"
A correspondent, Phil Mattingly, jumped in trying to explain the possible thinking process responsible for Trump’s merciless tariffs.
“The certainty of his economic team, particularly on the kind of data research side that—the people that have been telling you this can’t work, the markets that are reacting—are wrong. ‘They’re wrong. We know they’re wrong. We believe the first-term stuff worked, we just didn’t go big enough.’ I cannot stress to people enough how much that is internalized in the people that work for him," Mattingly told Bash.
She agreed, saying, “It’s definitely a very, very deeply held credo that this is all going to work out.”
