If the election doesn’t go his way, the economy will collapse, Christmas will be canceled and America as we know it will be “done,” Donald Trump promised ahead of the 2020 election.
Of course, that race didn’t go his way, and none of Trump’s predicted cataclysms materialized during Joe Biden’s presidency. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from recycling some of the same dim predictions about Kamala Harris’ presidency.
“If he’s elected, the stock market will crash,” Trump said in October 2020 in his only conversation with Biden. “If he gets in, you’re going to have a depression like you’ve never seen before.”
Depression never happened. Stocks rose during Biden’s presidency. But Trump recently predicted that a Harris victory would result in a “massive.” [stock] market downturn’ and ‘1929 style depression’.
In 2020, he tweeted, “This election is a choice between TRUMP’s recovery or BIDEN’s depression.”
In 2024, he said on Truth Social, “VOTERS HAVE A CHOICE – TRUMP’S WARNING OR 2024 HORRIBLE REVIEW & BIG BLOWOUT.”
Predicting the future is inherently difficult. And ranting about the danger of the other side winning is the norm for politicians of all kinds. But Trump’s penchant for hyperbole, overconfidence, 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]f Joe Biden ever became president,” Trump tweeted in 2020, “Our country ROCKED!”
“If we don’t win,” he told New Hampshire voters in 2024, “I think our country is done.”
Four years ago, he warned Michigan voters that “a vote for Biden is a vote to completely destroy your auto industry.”
On Wednesday, he warned Michigan voters: “If I don’t win, you won’t have an auto industry in two or three years. It’s all gone.”
Trump’s predictions about life under Biden’s presidency grew increasingly apocalyptic as Election Day 2020 approached.
As the Covid-19 pandemic raged, Trump told supporters that Biden planned to “impose a total shutdown” across the country and keep the country on lockdown to carry out his “plan to kill the American dream.”
“If you vote for Biden, it means no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, and no Fourth of July together,” he said at a rally in Goodyear, Arizona.
“If he comes in,” he said at a rally in Nevada, “the Christmas season will be canceled.”
Of course, Biden imposed no such restrictions, and holiday season shopping increased every year during Biden’s presidency to a record high last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
In a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Trump called Biden a “Trojan horse of socialism” who would “give violent anarchists free rein” to “completely dismantle and destroy … the American way of life.”
“Make no mistake, if you give Joe Biden power, the radical left will unleash police departments across America,” Trump warned, predicting that Biden would “immediately release 400,000 criminals onto your streets and your neighbors.”
In fact, crime is down, and Biden signed a law that increases police funding.
“If the left gains power, they will destroy the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint judges who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other constitutional freedoms,” Trump said in his convention speech.
The suburbs still stand, as does the Second Amendment, which is supported by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority.
Speaking at The Villages, a massive retirement community in Florida, Trump predicted that Biden would “dismantle your police department, dismantle our borders, confiscate your guns and end your religious freedom.”
Nearly four years into Biden’s tenure, the U.S.-Mexico border remains an issue, but it’s also still there.
Even God was not safe from a Biden presidency, Trump warned.
“If Joe Biden got in,” he told Fox News, “religion is gone, OK?” In another interview with the network, he said Biden would “take away your guns, your oil, and your God.” In Ohio, Trump said Biden is “against God” and that electing him would “offend the Bible, hurt God.”
Domestic oil production and arms sales both hit record highs under Biden, a practicing Catholic who has attended church regularly in the White House.
But Trump’s foresight continued with troubling visions of an America completely cowed by its rivals.
“If I don’t win the election, China will own the United States. You have to learn to speak Chinese,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in August 2020.
The number of American college students studying China actually declined under Biden after peaking in 2016.
Trump even predicted that if he loses the election, he may have to leave the country or withdraw from public life.
“If I lose to him, I don’t know what I’m going 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 was so embarrassed after losing to Biden that “I might have to leave the country — I don’t know.”
But there was no way, Trump confidently predicted, telling supporters in Wisconsin that his election was basically certain: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
Trump actually lost and did not flee the country.
This year, as Trump faces Vice President Biden, he has repeated some of the same gloomy predictions for the future if he doesn’t win.
While Biden was a “Trojan Horse of Socialism,” Trump’s campaign said in a press release last month that “Kamala Harris is a Trojan Horse of Nation Destruction, Communist Price Control, and Open Borders.”
In a fundraising video, Trump claimed that Harris also wants to ban Christmas. “He doesn’t want a Merry Christmas,” Trump said. “No, we’re going to have a good Christmas like everyone did seven years ago. We brought it back. It was in deep trouble, but we brought it back.”
The suburbs are also doomed if Harris wins, Trump told rally-goers last week in Tucson, Arizona, warning that Harris’ team “wants to abolish the suburbs.”
“I’m saving America’s suburbs,” he said.
He demands that Harris, if elected, “free up police money from day one,” confiscate guns and halt all fossil fuel production. “If he won the election, the day after the election, oil is dead, fossil fuels are dead,” he said in the debate.
Throughout his 2024 campaign, he has portrayed the election as an existential clash over the country’s future. He has used his first campaign speech last year to call the election “the last battle,” invoking the Armageddon imagery in the Book of Revelation and saying Harris will “destroy” America, “just like he destroyed San Francisco, just like he destroyed California.”
And repeating his false prophecy for 2020, Trump has told his supporters that this election is a sure thing too, and that the only way he can lose is if it is rigged.
“The only way they can beat us is to cheat,” he said in Las Vegas over the summer.
“We have all the votes we need,” he promised supporters last month in North Carolina.
It remains to be seen whether the prediction will come true or not.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
