Fact Check: Joe Biden Claims Trump Only Cares About the Stock Market

CLAIM: The only thing President Donald Trump cares about is the stock market.

VERDICT: FALSE. Trump specifically said saving lives was more important than the stock market.

Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed during a rare press briefing on Wednesday that President Donald Trump only cares about the stock market.

Biden claimed that Trump said things that were not true related to the coronavirus, and that the reason he did so was that he only cared about the stock market.

“He looks at it in one way: if the market — stock market is high, and it’s moving, and we’re reducing the number of people who are in real trouble economically, then it doesn’t matter what I say,” Biden told reporters.

It might seem odd to attack a rival for “reducing the number of people who are in real trouble economically.”

Regardless, the president has previously said that his priority is saving lives, not the stock market.

On March 12, for instance, the day after he gave an Oval Office address announcing that much of the country’s economy would be temporarily shut down, Trump said (emphasis added):

I don’t want people dying. That’s what I’m all about. I made a very tough decision last night and a very tough decision a long time ago with respect to China. I don’t want people dying, and that’s why I made these decisions. And whether it affects the stock market or not, very important, but it’s not important compared to life and death.

What any individual thinks or feels is obviously a matter of conjecture, but Trump has at least stated publicly that he is prepared to see the stock market suffer losses to save American lives.

He has certainly touted the recovery of the stock market as well. But that does not mean it is the only thing that matters.

Trump has also warned that Biden would crash the stock market if elected. It is unclear why Biden wants to risk reinforcing that message.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.