Joe Biden has hit out at Donald Trump’s claims that he “doesn’t want to be Herbert Hoover” in a new campaign video in which he informs his predecessor that he “already is”.
Mr Biden responded to a clip of Mr Trump from earlier this week, in which the former president said he hoped the US economy crashed “in the next 12 months”.
“When there’s a crash, I hope it’s in the next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover,” Mr Trump said, during a Lindell TV interview with Lou Dobbs on Monday.
The comment alluded to the 31st US president, who succeeded Calvin Coolidge at the tail-end of the Roaring Twenties before swiftly being hit by the Wall Street Crash in the autumn of 1929 and then voted out of office in 1932 as the Great Depression hit.
In his own video, posted on Thursday, Mr Biden blasted Mr Trump’s own record in office.
“They showed me the clip of Trump saying he wanted the economy to crash so he could gain politically. Says he doesn’t want to be Hoover,” he wrote on X/Twitter.
In the video Mr Biden added: “He’s acknowledging that my economy is doing pretty darn well because he doesn’t want that to continue.
“And by the way, the fact that he wants to see a crash in the next 12 months – he doesn’t want to be Herbert Hoover – he has to understand, he’s already Herbert Hoover.
“He’s the only other president who’s lost jobs during his term.”
In Monday’s interview Mr Trump declared that the US economy is “running off the fumes of what we did” and said that a crash before the end of the year would hurt the Biden administration.
Herbert Hoover, left, with Franklin D Roosevelt on the way to the latter’s swearing-in ceremony on 16 March 1933— (Getty Images)
“We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did. It’s just running off the fumes,” the Republican front-runner claimed.
“And when there’s a crash — I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”
However, despite his protestations that the economy is now much worse off than it was during his tenure in the White House, it is actually in fairly strong shape.
Inflation fell from a four-decade high of 9.1 per cent in June 2022 to just 3.1 per cent in November while unemployment is now down to 3.7 per cent and, it was announced last week, 216,000 new jobs were created in the final month of 2023.
Mr Trump has previously been the target of unfavourable comparisons to Hoover – both one-term Republicans managed to lose their parties the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
