Donald Trump has lashed out at Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman in a late-night rant after he weighed in on the president’s tariffs and the drama surrounding his jobs report.
In a typically irate post on Truth Social, Trump attacked the former New York Times columnist, who was awarded the Nobel in economics in 2008, as a “Deranged BUM” while urging people to adopt his own trigger-happy approach to lawsuits.
“Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been predicting Doom and Gloom ever since my great election success in 2016. In other words, he has been wrong for YEARS, as ALL markets have been hitting new HIGHS, and are now higher than ever before,” Trump posted just before midnight ET on Sunday. “People stayed out of the ‘BEST MARKET IN HISTOY’ [sic] because of this Trump Deranged BUM. Sue them!”
In response, Krugman told the Daily Beast he is “flattered” by the attention from Trump. “He must think people are listening,” Krugman added. “I might add ‘Deranged BUM’ to my profile.”
Trump didn’t specify exactly what about Krugman, an economist at the City University of New York, set him off, probably because there are plenty of recent possibilities to pick from.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, Krugman blasted Trump for instantly dismissing accurate jobs data the moment it turned negative.
“If you actually know anything about how they [jobs reports] are put together, it would require basically hundreds, if not thousands, of people to be in on the conspiracy,” Krugman said. “This is just silly stuff, and it’s clear that if Trump sees a number or a fact he doesn’t like, he claims that it’s a conspiracy against him.”
Krugman has also warned that Trump’s latest wave of tariffs, which took effect Aug. 7, could hammer the U.S. economy.
“We’re definitely seeing a slowdown in the economy. Whether it actually crosses the line into a recession is less clear, but… it’s going to feel pretty bad,” he told NPR.
In his Aug. 5 Substack newsletter, Krugman condemned Trump for firing Erika McEntarfer as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the agency reported the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs in July, far below expectations. Without offering evidence, Trump called the damning report “rigged” and politically motivated.
“Claiming that economic data you don’t like is fraud perpetrated by a deep state conspiracy has been standard practice on the right for a long time, going back to the ‘inflation truthers’ of the Obama years,” Krugman wrote.
Jealousy might also be fueling Trump’s fixation on Krugman. The president has repeatedly stated he wants and even deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and has been put forward for the prestigious honor several times.
His trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has even floated the idea that Trump’s tariff strategy warrants a Nobel Prize for economics, the same honor Krugman won in 2008 for his work on trade theory and new economic geography.
“I’m thinking that since he’s basically taught the world trade economics, he might be up for the Nobel in economics,” Navarro told Fox Business in late July.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
