Every time you think these Trump cheerleaders over on his favorite television channel (that still somehow pretends to be a "news" network) can't make bigger fools of themselves, they manage to do it again with segments like this one. Fox's Jeanine Pirro and Fox regular Dan Bongino were very upset with The New York Times for having the temerity to heaven forbid report on the possibility of a recession following Trump's ill-advised trade war with China.
It's pretty rich watching two of the biggest liars on television talk about another outlet becoming "tabloid journalism," but that's what the viewers were treated to during this whine-fest on this Saturday's Justice with Jeanine Pirro on Trump-TV:
“Russia didn’t work. Racism thing isn’t working. Now they are on the recession,” she said. In the past few weeks, the New York Times has run several news stories and analysis pieces pointing to negative economic indicators, including the stock market volatility spurred by Trump’s trade war with China.
“They are pushing on recession with no evidence of that either,” Bongino said, ignoring the economic warning signs provided by the Times and many other news outlets. “I have no problem with the New York Times turning into the equivalent of tabloid journalism. It’s perfectly legal to do that. There is nothing wrong with becoming the political equivalent of People magazine. But stop pretending you’re journalists!”
Pirro agreed and offered up as a rebuttal one of the president’s tweets touting the US economy before turning to a rather different anecdotal argument to support Trump. “There is something called animal instinct that kicked in in the economy when the president was elected,” Pirro said. “Everybody started realizing the economy is going to get better. When people like the New York Times keep talking about recession. Everybody instinctively starts to pull back and [the Times] can almost make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“You are right, it’s called animal spirits. You’re absolutely right, and the animal spirits are real,” Bongino added. “Economics, the allocation of scarce resources, has a psychological component. People consume and spend the wealth effect when they feel like they are doing okay. When the ‘New York Slimes’ and other outlets are sitting there telling people the hottest economy in the world is garbage, you’re not wrong by saying there’s a deep sociological, psychological effect on people.”
Over in upside-down land, starting trade wars doesn't cause recessions, reporting on someone starting trade wars and the possibility of a recession causes them. Got it.
