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President Donald Trump’s relentless use of Twitter dismays his enemies and even some of his fans. Even conservative media star Ben Shapiro begged Trump to “STOP TWEETING”.
On the contrary, I’ve long regarded Trump’s Twitter usage as a master stroke of modern political communication. “Trump Tweets” are in fact the 21st century answer to FDR’s fabled “fireside chats”. FDR’s use of radio to reach directly into Americans’ living rooms helped steer the national conversation and reassure a nation facing Depression and War.
But in the 1930s, radio was the upstart medium. The supposed “War of the Worlds panic” was mostly a fiction cooked up by jealous newspapers. If the media then was as deranged as it is now, FDR would have been ruthlessly attacked for “downplaying” the threat of war.
Trump, like FDR, is reassuring Americans that they “have nothing to fear but fear itself” in face of the Wuhan pandemic.
Contrary to the left-media’s fervently expressed hopes, Trump has bounced back from COVID-19. “I could have left two days ago. I felt great, better than 20 years ago,” Trump said in a video posted to Twitter. More importantly, he reassured other Americans, “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t let it take over your lives”.
Referring to his brief, socially-isolated and masked outing to greet supporters, Trump said, “I knew there was danger but I stood out front, I led. I knew there was a risk but that’s OK”. This is Trump, the supposedly “un-Presidential”, looking every inch the President.
Trump’s recovery and tweets are having immediate effects on the political and economic spheres.
President Trump’s COVID-19 infection is starting to stir a sense of renewed optimism on Wall Street – a sharp contrast to the fear of looming chaos of last week.
These days the biggest driver of markets is the money floods that are being generated by governments. If he becomes president Joe Biden is planning a much bigger money flood than President Trump so, on current market sentiments, that outweighs the higher taxes on high income earners and corporations.
But in Walter Reed hospital near Washington, two remarkable market-impacting events took place against a background of weaker-than-expected US September employment numbers.
Economic stimulus in the US has been mired in partisan politics for months. Democrats tried to hold back Trump’s initial stimulus spending, apparently hoping that a bad economy would help take Trump down. But with the American economy holding up far better than expected, Democrats switched to promising more, more, MORE! money, forcing House Republicans to balk in their turn. Then Trump personally took the matter in hand, Tweeting from his hospital bed: “OUR GREAT USA WANTS & NEEDS STIMULUS. WORK TOGETHER AND GET IT DONE. Thank you!”.
That tweet changed the game. Suddenly House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held an hour-long phone call and discussed “the justifications for various numbers” and “plan to exchange paper” in preparation for further discussions, according to the Pelosi camp.
She says Trump’s diagnosis was changing the dynamic of talks toward an agreement and called on the airline industry to delay furloughs, saying additional relief for the industry is “imminent”.
Not to be outdone, Trump sent off a series of tweets urging Americans to vote for him, citing the “biggest tax cut ever” and “stock market highs”.
The combined effect of the stimulus spending and an almost-miraculously recovered president will be a massive shot in the arm as Americans head to the polls.
What Trump is telling the world is that the new drugs being developed mean that the COVID death rate is going to be slashed and that means even if you are 74 and overweight you can overcome the virus[…]
If Trump does not relapse then we are on the way to a safer COVID world with vaccines and treatments available next year that were not available for most of 2020.
The episode is almost certain to boost his electoral stocks. While Joe Biden hides in his basement, Trump is looking every inch the leader who personally faced the danger of his country’s darkest hour and triumphed.
So as things now stand the Trump infection looks set to not only stimulate the US economy but perhaps lower the COVID fear rate.
This is marvellous news for markets. Trump is way behind in the opinion polls but his new theme is clear and it starts a new chapter in the campaign.
There is good reason to believe that the polls are as wrong as they were in 2016. Trump’s campaign was already steamrolling. Now it’s shifted up another gear.
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