President Donald Trump told the country on Sunday not to worry. Five days after voters took Congress away from his party, he promised a comeback and blamed the Democratic victory for one of the worst days Wall Street has seen in years.
For anyone with savings in the stock market, the week was a rough ride, and the argument over what caused it is now part of a bigger fight over who governs in Washington for the next two years.
“America took a giant step back in History with the results of the last Election,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday morning. He said the stock market, which he described as a “ROCKETSHIP” under his leadership, had taken “a one day, 3 Trillion Dollar loss.” He ended with a promise: “But have no fear, we will be back, BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”
The post was his clearest statement yet on the November 3 midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The new Congress takes office in January, and Democratic leaders have promised investigations into the administration, along with fights over its spending and immigration policies.
The market numbers behind the president’s claim are real, but the timeline matters. On Wednesday, November 4, the day after the election, stocks rose sharply. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1,569 points, or 3 percent, its best showing after a midterm election in 44 years.
The fall came on Thursday, November 5. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.52 percent, its worst day in 19 months. The S&P 500 fell 4.36 percent, and the Dow fell 3.44 percent. Reuters reported that the selloff wiped out about $3 trillion in value from S&P 500 companies, close to the figure the president cited.
Where analysts part ways with the president is over the cause. Reuters and other market reports said investors sold technology and chip stocks because they feared tougher rules on artificial intelligence and slower approvals for new data centers under a Democratic Congress. Some winning Democratic candidates, including the incoming governor of Texas, had campaigned on pausing new data center projects. Traders also pointed to high prices for technology shares and to forced selling by funds that had borrowed money to invest.
Trump made the same argument in person on Friday. Speaking to reporters in Florida, he said: “We lost about $3 trillion when they found out that the Democrats did well in the election, rather surprisingly, but that’s the way life goes.” At an appearance at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida the same day, he said: “Our country lost three trillion dollars all because of an election.”
The president still holds tools of his own. He can veto bills passed by Congress, and lawmakers need a two thirds majority in both chambers to override him. On Friday he named Stephen Miller, his hard line adviser on immigration, as his new chief of staff, a sign that he plans to fight rather than compromise.
Democratic leaders did not answer the Sunday post directly. They have said they plan to hold the administration to account and to fight Miller and his policies at every step. The White House, for its part, posted a reminder on X after the results: “PSA: TRUMP IS STILL YOUR PRESIDENT.”
Transparency note: The exact text of the post is taken from reproductions of the Truth Social post that agree word for word across Agence France-Presse reporting and several other outlets, and from screenshots of the post itself. The $3 trillion figure is Reuters’ estimate of the value lost by S&P 500 companies on November 5. The president’s claim that the election result caused the loss is his own; market analysts point mainly to fears of tougher artificial intelligence rules.
