Will Trump Crash Economy On Purpose? Historian Explains DANGEROUS MAGA Plot

Trump’s plan to crash America’s Economy & have his billionaire buddies buy the wreckage of the American dream is coming. Historian Thom Hartmann explains what’s behind Trump’s plan. MORE FROM THOM 📃 Thom's Hartmann's 'Daily Take' Newsletter: https://HartmannReport.com 🎦 Watch a full program re-run anytime: https://www.patreon.com/thomhartmann 🎧 Audio Podcast: https://thom.tv FOLLOW THOM 📕 AMAZON: https://amzn.to/2hS4UwY 📝 DAILY TAKE: https://hartmannreport.com 👥 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ThomHartmannProgram/ 📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/Thom_Hartmann 🎦 PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/thomhartmann 🐦 X: https://www.twitter.com/thom_hartmann Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hartmannreport.com 🌐 WEBSITE: https://www.thomhartmann.com 📺 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=thomhartmann 👕 Merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores/thom-hartmann-program-2 🍺 Thom Merchandise: https://teespring.com/thom-hartmann-mug?pid=522&cid=101870 ABOUT THE PROGRAM The Thom Hartmann Program is the leading progressive political talk radio show for political news and comments about Government politics, be it Liberal or Conservative, plus special guests and callers. #MoreFromThom #economy ✔ Amazon links are affiliate links TRANSCRIPT They're planning to crash the economy. You've got the debt ceiling coming, all this wild stuff, and another tax cut. They want to crash the economy—I'm telling you, hang on to your seat, it's going to get wild. Democrats are signaling a warning. I posted this over at Daily Kos as well. Democrats are pointing out that Trump's threats to increase our national debt by as much as $7 trillion—the cost of another round of tax cuts for billionaires—shift billions of Treasury dollars into crypto, and impose tariffs on imported goods. Any one of those three things could cause an economic crash. All three of them might create a perfect storm. Trump seems unconcerned, and the Republicans, meeting down at his shabby Doral Golf Club in Florida today, don’t seem worried either. To the average person, the idea of a recession is grim. Millions lose their jobs, people have to sell their 401(k)s at a loss out of desperation just to pay rent and buy food—it’s a horror show for average people, particularly in a country where 54% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So why isn't Trump worried? Why are Republicans and the billionaires who put them in power not worried? The reason is simple: there are three big benefits to billionaires in an economic crash. First, it’s a great excuse to cut government services and taxes for billionaires. They just say, "We need to cut taxes to stimulate the economy" or "We need to cut government services because there’s no money." Reagan did this in 1981, and George W. Bush did it in 2002 and 2003. Second, times of economic crisis increase tolerance for strongman governments. FDR ran a strongman government—one that everyone liked—but he was stomping all over Congress, issuing executive orders Republicans called unconstitutional. In Europe, Hitler used the Great Depression as the rationale for his Enabling Acts, which gave him rule by decree. Now, Trump seems to have rule by decree. He fired inspectors general in violation of the law and defied or refused to enforce other laws right in front of us, without consequence. It will only get worse. Third, and most importantly, billionaires love economic crashes because they create buying opportunities. I remember sitting in Gloria Swanson's apartment back in the 1980s. She was on the board of our Children’s Village, and we’d have dinner in her apartment every six months or so. She told me about Joe Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's father, who managed her for a while, was her lover for a while, and robbed her blind. During the Great Depression, Kennedy bailed out of the market just before the crash. As the market plunged, he started buying stocks. He made a fortune. J. Paul Getty did the same, leaving his parents’ golden anniversary in 1929 to buy stocks during the collapse, ultimately becoming the richest man in the world. For them, crashes are the opportunity of a lifetime. This happened again during the Bush crash of 2007-2009. Home prices dropped 21%, and over 10 million Americans lost their homes to predators like Steve Mnuchin. The stock market lost over 50%, bottoming out in March 2009. While working-class people were forced to sell their stocks at a loss just to survive, billionaires swooped in. From 2009 to 2012, the top 1% saw their income grow by over 31%, capturing 95% of income gains. The S&P 500 rose 462% between 2009 and 2020. A $1 billion investment in 2009 would be worth $4.6 billion by 2020. Then they did it again during the Trump COVID crash in 2020, when billionaires saw their wealth increase by 54% in a single year. They don't pay taxes on these gains, either.