Trump attempts to pin blame for the stock market stumbles on House Democrats' threats to impeach him
- President Donald Trump blamed a recent stock market selloff on Democrats and calls for impeachment.
- "As I have stated many times, if the Democrats take over the House or Senate, there will be disruption to the Financial Markets," Trump said.
- Trump also tried to dismiss calls for impeachment from a handful of Democrats.
- Most investors and analysts laid a good portion of the blame for December's drop at Trump's feet.
President Donald Trump on Friday pinned recent stock market falls on Democrats retaking the House and some lawmakers calls for impeachment.
In a Friday morning Twitter burst, the president took shots at the new House Democratic majority and the impeachment calls from a handful of members. Trump argued these factors contributed to recent declines in the stock market.
"As I have stated many times, if the Democrats take over the House or Senate, there will be disruption to the Financial Markets," Trump said. "We won the Senate, they won the House. Things will settle down. They only want to impeach me because they know they can't win in 2020, too much success!"
The blame game came after stocks swooned in December, marking the worst final month of the year since 1931, and a small contingent of Democrats on Thursday began the 116th Congress with calls to impeach Trump.
Trump previously dismissed the selloff in December as a "glitch" that would be solved with new trade deals, but the president on Friday blamed Democrats after two high-profile calls for Trump's impeachment on Thursday.
Rep. Brad Sherman of California told reporters on the first day of the new Democratic House majority that he planned to introduce articles of impeachment that would accuse the president of obstruction of justice related to the former FBI director James Comey's firing. Sherman also introduced articles of impeachment in 2017.
Freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan also called for Trump's impeachment during a fiery speech at a party for the progressive action group MoveOn.
"People love you, and you win, and when your son looks at you and says, 'Momma look, you won, bullies don't win,'" Tlaib said in a video posted to Twitter. "I said, 'Baby they don't, because we're gonna go in there, we're going to go in and impeach the m----- f-----.'"
Tlaib previously mentioned the idea of impeachment during the midterm campaign season.
Other Democrats, including party leadership, has pushed back on such calls. Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, told CNN on Friday that Tlaib's impeachment call was premature.
"I don't like that language. More to the point, I disagree with what she said," Nadler said. "It is too early to talk about that intelligently. We have to follow the facts and get the facts."
Trump's attempts to tie the stock market swoon to Democrats doesn't appear to pass muster.
The recent top for the market came in early October - roughly a month before Democrats actually regained control of the House - and the market was turbulent for nearly all of 2018, with multiple steep selloffs throughout the year.
Additionally, most investors and stock market analysts place more of the at the feet of Trump. The president's trade war with China, reversal on funding that led to the government shutdown, attacks on the Federal Reserve, and general uncertainty over policy direction have all been cited as contributors to market volatility.
Trump is not the only worry plaguing investors - the pace of Fed rate hikes and a global economic slowdown are also major reasons cited by market watchers.