Biden aides slam ‘vile’ Trump comments about economy crashing

White House and Biden campaign aides Tuesday hit back at former President Trump, who in a new interview said he hoped the U.S. economy crashed in the next 12 months, because he did not want to be the one to oversee a downturn if he wins reelection.

“This is absolutely vile and just par for the course for Donald Trump who only cares about himself,” Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesperson, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez in a statement said Trump’s comments were evidence he “spends every day worried about himself.”

“Donald Trump should just say he doesn’t give a damn about people, because that’s exactly what he’s telling the American people when he says he hopes the economy crashes,” she said. “In his relentless pursuit of power and retribution, Donald Trump is rooting for a reality where millions of Americans lose their jobs and live with the crushing anxiety of figuring out how to afford basic needs.”

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates issued a statement that did not directly name Trump, but suggested those who were hoping the economy failed were “revealing twisted true colors.”

“A commander in chief’s duty is to always put the American people first; never to hope that hard-working families suffer economic pain for their own political benefit,” Bates said. “Republican officials should welcome the economic progress President Biden is delivering, instead of revealing twisted true colors that would shrink the American middle class in the name of their own cynical self-interests.”

Other Democrats also piled on over Trump’s remarks.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in an MSNBC interview with former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, said Trump’s comments were “just another manifestation of the insensitivity and the grotesqueness of this person.”

Trump, who is the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024, sat for an interview with former Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs on a network launched by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell. In the interview, which aired Monday night, the former president described the economy as “fragile.”

“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,” he said. “It’s just running off the fumes.”

“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,” Trump added. “The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”

Hoover had been in office for just a few months when the stock market crashed in 1929, triggering the Great Depression.

The economy has been a strong point for Trump with voters, with polling showing most Americans trust Trump over Biden on the issue.

But Biden aides have repeatedly argued the president’s economic plan is working, pointing to a steady decline in inflation, strong employment numbers and continued growth that has defied expectations.

Updated at 1:19 p.m.