Donald Trump says although he does not put much credence in the stock markets, shareholders should not touch their investments. The real estate mogul also said Monday on CNN that S&P’s track record has not been good and in light of its “disgraceful” decision to downgrade “they shouldn’t be respected.”
“Well, I wouldn’t take the money out at this point,” Trump said. “I’ve never been a big stock market person because, you know, I just sort of figure you might as well go play Roulette — you’re banking on other people running your company.
“But at this point, with the kind of Dow that you’ve seen, you know, you’ll take it out and then all of a sudden it goes back up — I wouldn’t recommend that they take the money out,” he said. “And, again, there's no reason for this — you know somebody should have spoken to Standard & Poor's . . . they should not have been allowed to do this.
“And, you know, as you were asking me before, why are they so respected? They shouldn’t be respected,” Trump continued. “But that’s just years of tradition and history — but based on all of the calls that they’ve made over the last number of years, Lehman and lots of others, they should not be respected.”
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer noted that the other credit agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, have not downgraded America’s credit rating, even though there have been rumblings that such actions might be in the offing.
“Well, I watched a couple of the Standard & Poor’s top people on the television over the last couple of days and they are loving it — they’re having such a good time,” Trump said. “And I’m sure Moody’s will say: ‘Oh, gee, you know, they’re having a good time — let’s do the same thing.’
“I mean we just don’t have a well-run country — it’s as simple as that — and if we did, you wouldn’t be talking about Medicare cuts and [House Budget Committee Chairman] Paul Ryan wouldn’t have to be doing all of the things that he’s doing in terms of, you know, the potential cutting of Medicare, which is a disaster as far as I'm concerned,” he said. “It happens to be a great program — get rid of the abuse, get rid of all of the problems that you have with it, but it happens to be a great program.”
Trump said if the nation had leaders who could start the economic engine revving, there would not be a need to talk about cutting entitlements.
“Who wants to cut — I don’t want to cut Medicare — so you wouldn’t be talking about that if the economy was roaring,” he said. “And it could very easily if we stopped other nations from abusing us — if the economy was roaring, people wouldn’t have to be talking about cutting Medicare and Social Security.”
CNN’s Richard Quest asked Trump what he would have done to thwart the S&P action and whether the credit-rating agency erred in taking the unprecedented action of downgrading America from AAA to AA+.
“Well, I actually think what S&P did was wrong and I think they did it for a lot of other reasons, Richard — and I think you probably feel that also — I think what they did was disgraceful,” Trump said. “Now, look, we have a bad economy and things are not going well and we are . . . dysfunctional — and the president himself said it, we’ve become a dysfunctional nation,” Trump said. “But somebody should have really put the clamps on S&P, at least by going and talking and doing whatever they had to do — that doesn’t mean they would have been able to stop them, but something should have happened.
“And at a minimum, a better deal should have been made so S&P couldn’t have gotten away with their nonsense,” he said.