Seven weeks after he took office and inherited an economy that was the envy of the world, the president himself is refusing to rule out a recession this year. “I hate to predict things like that,” Trump told Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo in an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.

Of course he can ignore them. The central fact about Trump’s second term is that he cannot run for a third. He is now emancipated from public opinion, which did a serviceable job of keeping him in check last time around.