The liberal media were in mourning on Election Night when it became clear Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States.
Panic was palpable and journalists, particularly on NBC networks, blamed a significant drop in Dow futures on Trump’s victory. CBS said the drop in futures felt like “Brexit,” while Rachel Maddow claimed Trump would wear the market drop as a “badge of honor.” One NBC discussion even anticipated Trump would need to “rectify” a possible “economic collapse.”
But the Dow proved them wrong on Nov. 9, when it closed just 47 points away from a record high. After climbing 256.95 points, the Dow closed at 18,589.69.
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“Stock markets are not handling Election Night well,” MarketWatch markets reporter Joseph Adinolfi wrote. Adinolfi he wrote that futures for the S&P 500 and Dow both fell by more than 700 points.
But stocks quickly recovered the day after the election, according to The New York Times: “Futures for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index initially plunged 5 percent but recouped nearly all their losses when stocks started trading in the United States.” The markets closed with the Dow Jones Industrial Average near a record high on Nov. 9.
Broadcast media journalists, however, anticipated a more severe fallout for the markets and the economy.
Before Trump’s victory was declared, MSNBC’s All in with Chris Hayes host Chris Hayes reported on the decline of market futures.
“That gives you a sense of how global financial markets are most likely going to respond if it is the case that Donald Trump pulls out a victory tonight and is declared the President of the United States,” Hayes warned.
Also during MSNBC’s election night coverage, Hardball with Chris Matthews host Chris Matthews commented that Trump might signal to markets that he wasn’t “as crazy” as he looks.
“It's that world markets, roiling, going crazy, he has got the responsibility — probably, if he wins, to deal with that. So that's a reality he has to deal with. And I think he may come out tonight and just say I'm not as crazy as I look," Matthews said between 2 and 3 a.m. Nov. 9.
Rachel Maddow responded, “I don't know how he feels about that responsibility. He may look at that number, with the Dow futures down 800 and think, 'good.'"
She, Matthews and James Carville argued, but Maddow didn’t back down from that claim saying that when it came to the stock markets “being down on account of him” “I think he takes it as a badge of honor.”
Minutes after Trump’s victory speech (around 3 a.m. Eastern), NBC’s discussion turned to potential “economic collapse.” NBC’s Chuck Todd warned that Americans would wake up to “a Brexit-like reaction in the stock market.” Todd warned Trump would need to address that panic and “stabilize this economy quickly before that whole thing collapses.” His colleagues Savannah Guthrie and Andrea Mitchell made similar remarks.
Mitchell actually claimed global markets “have been collapsing overnight.”
