Donald Trump calls Nobel winner Paul Krugman “Deranged BUM” after economic criticism; Krugman responds with wit. Photo/X.
President Donald Trump unleashed a late-night tirade targeting Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman after Krugman criticized Trump’s tariffs and questioned his response to the latest U.S. jobs report.
In a post on his Truth Social platform just before midnight ET on Sunday, Trump described Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 and is a former New York Times columnist, as a “Deranged BUM.” Trump urged his followers to take legal action, blaming Krugman for allegedly keeping investors away from what Trump called the “BEST MARKET IN HISTOY [sic].”
“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 wrote. “People stayed out of the ‘BEST MARKET IN HISTOY’ because of this Trump Deranged BUM. Sue them!”
In response, Krugman told the Daily Beast that he was “flattered” by the attention and added wryly, “He must think people are listening.” Krugman also joked that he might add the phrase “Deranged BUM” to his online profile.
Trump did not specify the exact remarks by Krugman that prompted his outburst, but there have been several recent occasions where Krugman openly criticized Trump’s handling of economic data and policies.
On MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Krugman condemned Trump for immediately dismissing negative jobs reports as conspiracies. “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 further warned about the state of the economy, telling NPR, “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.”
In his August 5 Substack newsletter, Krugman strongly criticized Trump’s dismissal of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July jobs report, which showed the U.S. economy added only 73,000 jobs – far below market expectations.
Trump had fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after the release of this report and called the data “rigged” and politically motivated, though he offered no evidence to support these claims.
“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.
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Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
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