Donald Trump’s no good, very bad, horrible day just keeps getting worse for him

| 9:10 pm EDT August 5, 2019
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Donald Trump was already locked into having a bad day today when he reluctantly stepped up to give a speech condemning racist and white supremacists, which he didn’t want to give because those people represent his core base. The fact that Trump had to give this speech at all was a sign that he feared his presidency might implode if he didn’t try to do something to make it look like he was on the virtuous side of things. The trouble for Trump: his day just kept getting worse from there.

It wasn’t just that Donald Trump couldn’t bring himself to show an ounce of sincerity or leadership when he tepidly sniffed his way through a prepared speech on the teleprompter. It wasn’t even that he implied there had been a mass shooting in “Toledo” when it happened in the very different Ohio city of Dayton, though that was quite a telling moment.

Some White House correspondents did go ahead and report what Donald Trump wanted them to report, which is that he’s finally serious about taking a stand against racism. Every one of those correspondents knows that Trump didn’t mean a word of it. In any case, within days, Trump will be back to tweeting racist things, thus wiping out any minor perceptual gains he may or may not have made today.

But we all know why Trump’s presidency is still managing to hang on by a thread: the Obama economy is still going strong enough that some moderate Americans have been willing to overlook his general odiousness. That’s why it’s such a blow to Trump that the stock market had its worst day today in a long time, with the DJIA plunging more than seven hundred points today, and more than a thousand points since Thursday.

Donald Trump probably won’t be able to finish out his current term, let alone get reelected, if the economy tanks. Correctly or not, many Americans measure the health of the economy by which way the stock market is headed. If the Dow Jones keeps plummeting like this, and Trump has no economic boom to fall back on, his status as a bumbling racist will be all he has left.