It’s all gone now

| 1:25 pm EDT March 18, 2020
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Donald Trump has failed at nearly everything he’s tried in office. He hasn’t even been able to pull off his stupidest and most simplistic ideas, like his border wall. Heading into November, just about the only bragging point he’s had was the fact that he hadn’t yet managed to destroy the roaring Obama economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average isn’t a full measure of the overall stock market, and in turn the stock market certainly isn’t a full measure of the overall economy. But the Dow Jones is the specific bragging point that Donald Trump has loved to use when touting his supposed economic prowess. That’s a big problem for him now, because today the Dow Jones has plummeted to about 19,500 at the moment this article is being published. The Dow opened at 19,804 on the day he took office.

That’s right, every last bit of stock market growth during Donald Trump’s presidency is now gone. The Dow Jones was always growing far more slowly in the Trump era than it had in the Obama era. But now the stock market is in negative territory for Trump’s presidency.

Of course Donald Trump likes to take credit for the stock market dating back to election day in November 2016. But on that day the Dow Jones closed at 18,332. If the market has another bad day tomorrow like the one it’s having today, we could fall below that number as well.