Trump: ‘Market would tank if I’m impeached’

US President Donald Trump has said he believes the economy would tank if he were to be impeached.

Mr Trump was asked in an interview with Fox & Friends if he believes Democrats will launch impeachment proceedings if they win the House this autumn, as many suspect.

He said: “If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor.”

Mr Trump said Americans would see economic “numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse”.

But he also expressed doubt that that would ever happen, saying: “I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job.”

His comments followed his denials of wrongdoing amid allegations that he orchestrated a campaign cover-up to buy the silence of two women who say they had affairs with him.

Mr Trump also suggested it should be illegal for people facing prosecution to co-operate with the government in exchange for a reduced sentence.

He was reacting to the guilty plea entered by his former lawyer Michael Cohen to a range of charges.

Mr Trump accused Cohen of implicating him to get a better deal with prosecutors, adding that Cohen “makes a better deal when he uses me”.

The president claimed people who decide to co-operate with the government “make up stories” and “just make up lies”.

He said: “It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal,” adding “it’s not a fair thing”.

Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight charges, including campaign finance violations that he said he carried out in co-ordination with Mr Trump.

Behind closed doors, Mr Trump expressed worry and frustration that a man intimately familiar with his political, personal and business dealings for more than a decade had turned on him.

Yet his White House signalled no clear strategy for managing the fallout.

At a White House briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted at least seven times that Mr Trump had done nothing wrong and was not the subject of criminal charges.