'You live by the sword, you die by the sword': Trump says the stock market is still a fair indicator of his success
(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump appears to be OK with people judging his success by the stock market.
In an interview with the Associated Press on Friday, Trump was asked whether it was still fair to use the stock market as a scorecard to evaluate the success of his presidency.
"You live by the sword, you die by the sword, to a certain extent," Trump told the AP.
The comments came after Trump and administration officials had been touting the postelection surge in stocks as a vote of confidence in Trump. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC in February that the market was "absolutely" a report card on the administration, and Trump has tweeted about the market's run.
But as the market has cooled off in recent weeks, Trump administration officials have backed off the idea. The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said on March 21 that you "can't look at one indices and say that's the benchmark for an entire economy."
Past administrations usually avoided using the market as a scorecard for success since a multitude of factors outside the president's control affect stock prices.
In the interview, Trump did point to job growth numbers as another example of his success.
"But we create a lot of jobs, 500,000 jobs as of two months ago, and plenty created since," Trump said.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 317,000 jobs in the two months since Trump took office. This is roughly on par with the trend in job growth since the financial crisis.
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