If the election doesn’t go his way, the economy will crash, Christmas will be canceled and America as we know it will be “finished,” Donald Trump promised in the run-up to the 2020 election.
That race, of course, didn’t go his way, and none of Trump’s predicted catastrophes materialized under a Joe Biden presidency. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from repeating some of the same dark portents about a Kamala Harris presidency.
“If he gets elected, the stock market will crash,” Trump said in October 2020 during his only debate with Biden. “If he gets elected, you’re going to have a depression like you’ve never seen.”
The depression never happened. Stocks rose during Biden’s presidency. But Trump recently predicted that a Harris victory would lead to “a huge [stock] “market decline” and “a 1929-style depression.”
In 2020, he tweeted: “This election is a choice between a TRUMP RECOVERY or a BIDEN DEPRESSION.”
In 2024 he said on Truth Social: “VOTERS HAVE A CHOICE – TRUMP’S PROSPERITY, OR KAMALA’S CRASH AND GREAT DEPRESSION IN 2024.”
Predicting the future is inherently difficult. And bluster about the danger of the other side winning is the norm for politicians of all stripes. But Trump’s penchant for hyperbole, hubris and black-and-white claims has made him a particularly inaccurate Nostradamus.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
“[I]“If Joe Biden ever became president,” Trump tweeted in 2020, “our country would COLLAPSE!”
“If we don’t win,” he told New Hampshire voters in 2024, “I think our country is over.”
Four years ago, he warned Michigan voters that “a vote for Biden is a vote to…completely wipe out your auto industry.”
On Wednesday, he warned Michigan voters: “If I don’t win, within two to three years you won’t have an auto industry. It’ll all be gone.”
Trump’s predictions about life under Biden as president grew increasingly apocalyptic as Election Day 2020 approached.
As the Covid-19 pandemic rages, Trump told supporters that Biden planned to impose “a total lockdown” across the country and keep the country locked down to fulfill his “plan to kill the American dream.”
“If you vote for Biden, that means no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no Fourth of July together,” he said at a rally in Goodyear, Arizona.
“If he comes,” he said at a rally in Nevada, “the Christmas season will be canceled.”
Biden, of course, has not imposed lockdowns, and according to the National Retail Federation, holiday shopping has increased every year of Biden’s presidency, reaching a record high last year.
In his speech at the 2020 Republican Party convention, Trump called Biden “a Trojan horse for socialism” who would “give free rein to violent anarchists” to “completely dismantle and destroy the American way of life.”
“Make no mistake, if you put Joe Biden in power, the radical left will defund police departments across America,” Trump warned, predicting that Biden planned to “immediately release 400,000 criminals onto your streets and into your neighborhoods.”
In fact, crime is down and Biden has signed legislation that gives police more money.
“If the left comes to power, they will tear down your suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint judges who will erase your Second Amendment and other constitutional freedoms,” Trump said in his speech to Congress.
The suburbs still exist, as does the Second Amendment, backed by a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
During a speech at The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in Florida, Trump predicted that Biden would “dismantle your police departments, dismantle our borders, confiscate your guns and end religious freedom.”
Nearly four years after Biden took office, the US-Mexico border remains a problem.
Even God was not safe from a Biden presidency, Trump warned.
“If Joe Biden comes in,” he said on Fox News, “religion will be gone, okay?” In another interview with the network, he said Biden would “take away your guns, your oil, your God.” In Ohio, Trump said Biden is “against God” and that his election would “harm the Bible and God.”
Both domestic oil production and arms sales reached record highs under Biden, a practicing Catholic who attended church regularly while in the White House.
But Trump’s predictions continued, and he painted disturbing pictures of an America completely intimidated by its rivals.
“If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States. You’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in August 2020.
The number of American students studying Chinese actually declined under Biden, after peaking in 2016.
Trump even predicted that if he lost the election, he might have to leave the country or retire from public life.
“If I lose to him, I don’t know what to do. I’ll never talk to you again,” he told North Carolina rally-goers four years ago. “You’ll never see me again.”
In Georgia, days before the election, Trump said he would be so embarrassed to lose to Biden that he “might have to leave the country — I don’t know.”
But that chance was zero, Trump confidently predicted. He told his supporters in Wisconsin that his election was all but assured: “The only way we can lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
Trump did indeed lose and did not flee the country.
This year, as Trump runs against Biden’s vice president, he’s repeating some of the same dire predictions about the future if he doesn’t win.
While Biden was a “Trojan horse for socialism,” Trump’s campaign said in a press release last month that “Kamala Harris is a Trojan horse for nation-destroying spending, communist price controls, and open borders.”
In a fundraising video, Trump claimed Harris also wants to ban Christmas. “She doesn’t want a Merry Christmas,” Trump said. “No, we’re going to have a Merry Christmas, just like we had seven years ago for everybody. We brought it back. It was in big trouble, but we brought it back.”
The suburbs are also doomed if Harris wins, Trump told attendees at a rally in Tucson, Arizona, last week. He warned that Harris’ team “wants to abolish the suburbs.”
“I will save America’s suburbs,” he said.
He insists that Harris, if elected, will “defund the police on day one,” confiscate guns and phase out all fossil fuel production. “If she wins the election, the day after the election,” he said in the debate, “oil will be dead, fossil fuels will be dead.”
Throughout his 2024 campaign, he has portrayed the election as an existential clash for the future of the country, using his first campaign rally last year to call the election “the final battle,” referencing the Book of Revelations’ depiction of Armageddon and saying Harris would “destroy” America, “just like she destroyed San Francisco, just like she destroyed California.”
And Trump is repeating his false prediction from 2020 by telling his supporters that this election, too, is certain and that he can only lose if it is rigged.
“The only way they can beat us is by cheating,” he said in Las Vegas last summer.
“We have all the votes we need,” he promised his supporters last month in North Carolina.
Whether that prediction will come true remains to be seen.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
