Donald Trump just picked the worst possible time to do one of the dumbest things he’s ever done

| 6:04 pm EDT May 13, 2019
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Donald Trump has done a lot of dumb things during his time in politics, which is why he has a very low approval rating, he’s accomplished relatively little of his stated agenda, his scandals are being exposed by the day, and calls for impeachment are growing louder by the hour. But Trump just did one of the dumbest things he’s ever done, and he’s doing it at the worst possible time for him.

Stop and ask yourself the best thing that Donald Trump has going for him right now. It’s not his racist base, which has always been too small to prop him up all by itself. The best thing he has going for him is the strong economy. The one he inherited from President Obama and he still hasn’t managed to fully screw up, despite a number of economically stupid moves over the past two years. Now Trump is blowing that – badly.

Trump has been making a mess of things with his tariffs against China, both because tariffs almost never work when anyone tries them, and because Trump doesn’t even know what a tariff is. Today he decided to dig an even deeper hole for himself by further increasing those tariffs. He then bragged that these tariffs are making the United States rich, revealing once again that he doesn’t know who pays a tariff. Thanks to Trump’s idiocy today, the stock market plummeted, with the DJIA closing down around 600 points.

We’ll see if investors continue to run away from Donald Trump’s tariffs as the week goes on, but considering how much damage these tariffs will do to the U.S. economy in the coming months, there is every reason to expect further selloffs. The strong economy is the one thing Trump still had going for him – and he just decided to tank it. Over the past month, the percentage of Americans who want Trump impeached has climbed from the thirties to the forties. The lower the stock market goes, the higher the impeachment number will go.