The real reason Donald Trump is manipulating the stock market

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Last week Palmer Report pointed out that, whether by design or not, Donald Trump has been manipulating the stock market. We were left to wonder why just about no one else in the media was talking about it, considering how increasingly obvious it was. Now we’re finally seeing the buzz this week that the storyline deserves.

Here’s what Palmer Report wrote after Donald Trump was caught making up fake phone calls with the government of China because he was hoping to boost the stock market that day:

Trump is too debt-ridden and cash-poor to have anything to invest in the stock market himself, and we know that no one is willing to loan him money anymore. For that matter, his antics consistently come across as the actions an erratic guy who’s desperate to prove that he’s smarter than his fellow world leaders, better at economics than his predecessor, and inclined to blow off steam each time things go further south for him. If Trump were trying to make the market go up and down in strategically, he could do it much more effectively while being far less obvious about it.

There is nothing that suggests that Donald Trump is doing any of these things because he’s trying to manipulate the market for his own personal gain. There is, however, another possibility. What if someone who has Trump’s ear, and who is invested in the stock market, has been steering an unwitting Trump into taking erratic action at just the right times?

Keep in mind that Donald Trump barely seems to know what he’s saying or doing lately. The notion of him as master manipulator just doesn’t hold water – at least not these days. Given what we’re seeing play out, if the market is being manipulated, the most logical explanation would be that someone in Trump’s orbit is goading him into these absurd tariffs and rabid tweets. Either that, or we’re seeing Trump erratically go off the deep end without rhyme or reason, manipulating the stock market at random because he’s just that mentally incompetent, and we’re all trying too hard to find a logical explanation when there simply isn’t one.

Now the topic is beginning to see some broader coverage. Mediaite asked a couple days ago why the mainstream media wasn’t talking about Trump’s stock market manipulation. Since that time, various large and medium sized news outlets have picked up on the topic. We still stand by our original analysis, but there are various ways to look at it – and what matters here is that the topic is now getting covered more broadly.