Fox & Friends claims talk of a recession is a ‘deliberate’ attempt to hurt Trump’s reelection chances

According to the hosts at “Fox & Friends,” all of the bad financial news coming from Wall Street and other sources about a recession is part of a grand conspiracy meant to damage President Donald Trump politically so he doesn’t win reelection in 2020.

During a debate on the economy Monday morning, co-host Ainsley Earhardt declared:

“It’s so obvious what they are doing. They do not want him to win again and they don’t like that the economy is doing well, apparently.”

Fox Business Network contributor Charles Payne agreed, noting that even talking about a possible recession might cause one to happen:

“The CEO of Bank of America said it best, Brian Moynihan said that the only fear of recession we have is the fear of recession. In other words, the only thing that can happen in this country right now that can derail this economic juggernaut, is if everyone believes it’s going to be derailed.

“I hate to say it, but to a degree the media almost did that in December, and I think some people do it deliberately. Listen, there’s no economic data out there that suggests we are on the cusp of a recession.”

What Payne failed to address is why exactly the president continues to demand that the Federal Reserve lower interest rates if things are so rosy for the U.S. economy. Why cut rates if things are booming? Wouldn’t that be counterproductive?

When co-host Steve Doocy pointed to an inversion of the U.S. Treasury yield curve, which has been a leading indicator of a coming recession for the past 50 years, Payne suggested that retail sales were a more important barometer, though he provided no evidence to support his assertion:

“Guess what we saw last week? Retail sales soar, absolutely soared significantly better than anyone participated. We saw an earnings report from Walmart that was absolutely remarkable.”

Payne then added that if sales are good at Walmart, that proves there’s nothing to worry about:

“Here’s why Walmart is a great proxy. Not because they did almost $131 billion in sales in three months, but because every American goes there. One-third of the shoppers have households $100,000 income. People used to think, Walmart, lower end — no. that’s Americana.”

At the end of the segment, Payne joined the conspiracy club with this statement:

“Bottom line is, it seems to be a deliberate attempt by many people to make this economy go into recession.”

Then again, if things are going so well, how can talking about something change the facts? The flawed logic being used by the folks at Fox is almost as weak as what we hear from the president via his Twitter feed.

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