In a late-night tirade on social media, President Trump lashed out at Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, calling the former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor a “Deranged BUM” after Krugman was critical of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, ongoing trade war, and jobs report controversy.
Just before midnight on Sunday, Trump attacked the former New York Times columnist, who now shares his views on Substack, in a post on Truth Social that appeared to encourage lawsuits against Krugman, who Trump said has “been predicting Doom and Gloom ever since” he was elected president in 2016.
“In other words, he has been wrong for YEARS, as ALL markets have been hitting new HIGHS, and are now higher than ever before. People stayed out of the ‘BEST MARKET IN HISTO[R]Y’ because of this Trump Deranged BUM. Sue them!” Trump wrote, as the impact of his policies begins to show visible damage on the economy.
Krugman was unfazed about becoming the latest target of Trump’s ire.
“I consider it an honor, and have added ‘Deranged BUM’ to my Substack profile,” Krugman said by email.
What set the president off, Krugman said, was probably his appearance on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” last week, when he pilloried Trump for dismissing the latest jobs report because of unfavorable data and firing the head of the agency in charge of producing the monthly figures, a move that drew sharp criticism.
“If Trump sees a number or a fact he doesn’t like, he claims that it’s a conspiracy against him,” Krugman told O’Donnell. (Trump has said he watches “hours” of cable news daily, including the left-leaning MSNBC.)
After revisions to earlier jobs reports showed that more people were out of work, Trump called the new numbers “rigged” — a claim that Krugman wrote on Substack was both “ugly nonsense” and “predictable.” (Trump has a history of rejecting and misrepresenting data that casts him in a poor light, from vote counts to coronavirus numbers.)
“Claiming that economic data you don’t like is fraud perpetrated by a deep state conspiracy has been standard practice on the right for a long time, going back to the ‘inflation truthers’ of the Obama years,” Krugman wrote.
Since Trump began his second term, Krugman has been sounding the alarm about his economic stewardship and blitz of tariff hikes, writing in a newsletter entitled “Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy?” in April that “Trump’s tariffs are a disaster,” but his “policy process is worse.”
More recently, he lambasted Trump’s announcement of a “massive trade deal” with the European Union as “the emperor’s new trade deal,” saying that “Europe hasn’t actually promised what he thinks it has.”
“There has always been a whiff of megalomania about Trump’s tariff policy,” Krugman wrote. “However, by making 15 percent tariffs the new normal …. Trump has used up much of whatever trade ammunition he had.”
Trump’s “lack of awareness should worry us all,” he added.
In the past week, Krugman has warned that “the data really are looking increasingly stagflationary,” pointing to the effects of Trump pursuing “really extreme policies on both trade and immigration.”
For example, Trump has reversed decades of gradual trade liberalization, the number of foreign-born workers is shrinking, and there are multiple indicators “suggesting a weakening economy,” Krugman wrote.
“Inflation is coming, while stagnation seems to have arrived,” he said.
Hours after Trump unloaded on Krugman, Krugman posted a newsletter blasting the White House for holding a briefing with Stephen Moore about the economy, writing that “even among dishonest right-wing hacks Moore stands out for his pathological inability to get numbers and facts right.”
At the end of the post, Krugman called Trump’s “Deranged BUM” moniker “flattering.”
Meanwhile, Trump continued to defend the economy on Monday morning.
“Tariffs are making our Country Strong and Rich!!!” he posted on Truth Social.
Shannon Larson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @shannonlarson98.