JUST IN: NYT Reports Trump WH Economic Team Privately Tipped Off Insiders About Covid Risks in February, Fueling Market Crash
The Trump White House’s economic advisers were privately warning conservative insiders and wealthy donors of the uncertainty about the Covid outbreak in late February, even as the president was trying to reassure the public that everything was fine and the virus would soon disappear.
According to the New York Times story published late on Wednesday night, this disconnect helped to tip off GOP elites and well-connected traders get an early warning about a possible unprecedented market crash. The report centers on a memo written by a hedge fund consultant, who was present at a three-day meeting at the conservative Hoover Institution. Among the Trump administration speakers at the event who were sounding the alarm was White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow.
The consultant’s assessment quickly spread through parts of the investment world. U.S. stocks were already spiraling because of a warning from a federal public health official that the virus was likely to spread, but traders spotted the immediate significance: The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.
Interviews with eight people who either received copies of the memo or were briefed on aspects of it as it spread among investors in New York and elsewhere provide a glimpse of how elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering.
As the advanced tip-off of a potential coronavirus pandemic rippled through a cloistered circle of investors, big bets against the market began rolling in. “Short everything,” the Times reports was one trader’s reaction to the shocking news.
The news that the Trump White House was telling rich investors and elite donors the truth about the dangers of Covid while peddling a much more optimistic and, ultimately, false face in public mirrors the president’s own intentionally deceptive language about the virus to the American people, which he admitted to in taped conversations with Bob Woodward.
