Eight years ago today, the recession and financial collapse that destroyed jobs, ruined retirements, and hurt Americans began. And Donald Trump thought that was a good thing – he rooted for a housing market collapse for his own corporate benefit, and actually may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. Trump has even doubled down on those comments and said, “Frankly, this is the kind of thinking our country needs – understanding how to get a good result out of a very bad and sad situation.”
And yet today of all days, Paul Ryan heaped praise on Trump’s business record specifically, saying that having someone with his pro-recession credentials in the White House is “not the worst idea.” This is also the same businessman who lined his own pockets with funds intended to help small businesses recover after 9/11.
“Wishing economic disaster on Americans so he can make a few more bucks is not a quality that should endear a presidential candidate to Paul Ryan and House Republicans, but they stand with him anyway,” said Meredith Kelly of the DCCC. “As we look back at the last eight years of recovery from this recession and the work that remains to be done, how it is possible that Paul Ryan can stand behind Donald Trump and think that it’s anything other than the ‘worst idea’ to put him in the White House?”
Background:
According to NBC: “Donald Trump counseled Trump University students to take advantage of the housing bubble as an investment opportunity and said, just a year before it burst, that he was ‘excited’ for it to end because of the money he’d make.” CNN also reported, “Two years before the housing market collapsed in 2008 and millions of Americans lost their homes, Donald Trump said he was hoping for a crash. ‘I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy,’ Trump said in a 2006 audiobook from Trump University.”
What’s worse, Trump not only cheered on the crash, he likely helped cause it. According to the Washington Post, “Trump Mortgage approved subprime mortgages to unqualified borrowers. The mortgages were one of the key financial instruments linked to the crash.”