CNBC’s Jim Cramer Throws Around C-Word As Trump Stock Crisis Deepens — Says Slide Is Headed For ‘Crash’
CNBC host Jim Cramer said if President Donald Trump continues on the same path, the stock market dive could turn into a genuine “crash.”
The stock market dropped like a boulder as soon as the opening bell rang Thursday morning after Trump announced his tariff program, and closed almost 1700 points in the hole — and that was before China announced reciprocal tariffs that sent futures crashing again. But Trump, in comments to reporters on the North Lawn and aboard Air Force One Thursday afternoon, projected success.
On Friday morning’s edition of CNBC’s Squawk on the Street — minutes before the opening bell saw the Dow plunge almost a thousand points in an instant — Cramer told co-host Carl Quintanilla that “if you wanted to make the market crash, I think you would go with this game plan”:
CARL QUINTANILLA: Are you suggesting because this will get written up —
JIM CRAMER: I don’t care.
CARL QUINTANILLA: — That we are approaching the risk of a true market crash. We don’t use that word on this air —
JIM CRAMER: No I’m just saying if you bottom-fished Thursday and if you bottom-fished Friday in 1987, you slept with the fishes on Monday.
CARL QUINTANILLA: You did suggest this morning that maybe the selling in Apple’s a good example, was getting a little too aggressive.
JIM CRAMER: Well, I mean, look. A lot of people are in disbelief and don’t think that a Peter Navarro, for instance, who’s a very fine man, or a Bessent, wouldn’t go in, maybe a Lutton, he wouldn’t even go to the president and say, “Look, we don’t really want a crash. You don’t want to be as hard-line. Maybe you do the TikTok deal. Maybe you say, look, but here’s a way to cure things, which was the way that Nvidia did with Taiwan.”
But they could have a crash, I don’t see why not. Why would you buy stocks?
…
I do think that what’s happened, Carl, is that I struggle for why — for what the president’s game plan is.
Because if you wanted to make the market crash, I think you would go with this game plan.
I don’t like that game. I do not favor that. That’s a they know nothing game plan, and it’s very disappointing because I’m a savvy person, business person, surrounded by business people. It should not be in our country’s interest to have the market crash.
Now, if I am blank for what I said, you know what? I don’t play for dinner! I am finally at the age where I am allowed to say that if I mean it. Now, I said it a couple of other times and I was right.
In every occasion I was in cash for 1987 in cash. That was not stupid. I was cash for the crash. I obviously said in 2007 that the… They knew nothing. That was a good call.
I don’t want this to be that call. There’s plenty of opportunity for the president to say, you know, I’ve been thinking, you know. We’ll do the TikTok deal. We’ll avoid this. Here’s the cure path. Peter Navarro, will you give him a cure path? I mean, what are you doing? You’re in the Peace Corps for heaven’s sake. Tofs, you were like a regular guy.
But then you have to be careful, because I can’t think of a single reason in the world to buy a stock.
Watch above via CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.
