With the stock market nearing correction territory Monday, former Obama White House Press Secretary Jay Carney suggested on Twitter that President Trump should have learned something from his predecessor and be careful not to tout optimistic looking stocks. It is just too risky.
The Dow Jones plunged almost 1,600 points and essentially erased its gains for the year. It was the worst loss in six and a half years.
The Obama administration, Carney claimed on Twitter, was careful to never boast about the stock market as Trump has often done.
Good time to recall that in the previous administration, we NEVER boasted about the stock market -- even though the Dow more than doubled on Obama's watch -- because we knew two things: 1) the stock market is not the economy; and 2) if you claim the rise, you own the fall.
— Jay Carney (@JayCarney) February 5, 2018
Except he did. A social media user screen shotted a relevant excerpt from a transcript of an interview Obama did with ABC's David Muir in 2011, where the president was happy to talk about the increased value of stocks under his watch. The transcript can be found on his archived White House website.
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) February 5, 2018
Perhaps being made well aware of his mistake, Carney began to backtrack. Okay, Obama did tout the stock market sometimes, but not every week.
While @BarackObama and others would on occasion mention the stock market’s revival as part of a broad observation about America’s recovery from the Great Recession - esp during the 2012 re-elect - we didn’t boast about daily or weekly spikes, for the aforementioned reasons.
— Jay Carney (@JayCarney) February 5, 2018
He got called out again, and had to cover his tracks again.
Per my last tweet, should have said “only after multiple years of market, jobs and GDP growth” - and not as a boast in year one on daily spikes. Just politically unwise. By the time of this citation, Obama had been president 5+ years and Dow had doubled. https://t.co/q2mJUoejiU
— Jay Carney (@JayCarney) February 5, 2018
Still, Monday's news was alarming for investors. White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah tried to subdue fears, noting that "markets do fluctuate in the short term," but the economy was still heading in the right direction.