Two CNBC hosts went after each other this morning over the stock market rallying back up to 25,000, with things getting quite heated at times:
It essentially boils down to Joe Kernen accusing Andrew Ross Sorkin of trying to panic people throughout this pandemic and Sorkin accusing Kernen of pretending like everything was ok in order to “help your friend, the president.”
Here’s more from DC Examiner:
Two hosts of the CNBC show Squawk Box got into a heated argument over their reactions to the recent stock market bump.
A discussion between co-anchors Joe Kernen and Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday morning got heated after Kernen accused his colleague of being too pessimistic in his evaluation of the positive market turn. Sorkin defended his point by claiming that “a lot of smart people” are questioning how the market could be so high despite the coronavirus’s impact on the economy.
“Why is that the smart people?! They’ve been wrong for 35%!” Kernen said, referring to gains the Dow Jones Industrial Average has made since its free fall in March. “Why are they smart?! Just because they can see what’s right in front of their nose?! That doesn’t make them smart! It makes them not savvy about the market!”
“Joe! You missed it a 100% on the way down!” Sorkin shot back. “And you missed 100,000 deaths!”
After Kernen criticized him for raising his voice, the verbal confrontation began subsiding before it was quickly restarted when Kernen said, “I’m sorry?” in an apparent demonstration that he was taken aback by the conversation.
“No, you’re not!” Sorkin responded, reigniting the clash. “Go ahead with the news!”
“You panicked about the market, panicked about COVID, panicked about the ventilators, panicked about the PPE, panicked about ever going out again,” Kernen said.
“Joseph! Joseph! You didn’t panic about anything! Joseph, 100,000 people died! One hundred thousand people died, Joe! And all you did was try to help your friend, the president!” Sorkin rebuked. “That’s what you did! Every single morning on this show! Every single morning on this show! You used and abused your position, Joe!”
While I don’t watch CNBC, I tend to like Kernen’s explanation of things noting that we were always going to rebound and there was never any real reason to truly panic as though the sky were falling. Certainly it’s disheartening to see the stock market crash and everything around it, but we’ve been through some pretty terrible stuff in this country and we always bounce back.
But I think for many in the media it’s more than just about panicking at what we see right in front of us. There’s obviously a political dimension to this, where a lot of this ‘panic’ exists to rile viewers up so that they blame Trump for everything that’s happened. I think that’s what is really going on and is at the heart of this argument between Kernen and Sorkin.