After days of chaos, investors want to believe President Donald Trump will blink on his market-disrupting tariffs.
Their desire to staunch the bleeding was on full display early Monday when a single post of entirely fabricated news on X made the market rapidly jump up by as much as 10% before crashing down.
An account that goes by the handle "Walter Bloomberg" shared a snippet that reportedly came from National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. The since-deleted post said that Trump was considering a 90-day pause on his widespread tariffs that have upended the market.
The frenzy around the post grew so strong that CNBC briefly ran a chyron reporting the news. However, the White House quickly denied the report and the stock market continued its downward slide.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the pause "fake news" in an interview with CNBC.
Hassett did speak on Trump's tariffs on Monday morning, telling the hosts of "Fox & Friends" that a pause would be entirely up to the president.
"I think the president is gonna decide what the president is gonna decide," he said. "I would urge everyone...to ease of the rhetoric a little bit."
The market turmoil brings together several strands of needless meddling from Trump administration officials. The tariffs themselves come directly from the president, who has shown no desire to back away from his economic brinksmanship. However, the fake news could not have spread so quickly if Trump adviser Elon Musk had not torpedoed the verified user system of his social media platform in the hopes of turning a buck.
In its original form, the "blue check" on X denoted a user who was independently verified by the platform as a news source, celebrity or other notable figure. Musk ended that system in favor of a premium tier on the social media app while leaving the familiar checkmarks in place. The post that sent investors scrambling came from an account using the name Bloomberg in the house style of real breaking news accounts on the platform. A glance at the checkmark gave it an unfortunate air of legitimacy.
It's not the first time that the platform's lack of verification guardrails has been used to sew chaos and spread misinformation. In 2022, a verified account took on the branding of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and sent out a message claiming "insulin is free now." The post caused the giant pharma company's stock to plummet and encouraged Lilly to pull its ads from the platform.
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