Reporter warns Kamala Harris 'hype' might be coming 'back down to earth' after stocks plunged

The Associated Press' Michelle Price warned during a panel discussion Monday on CNN that the hype around Vice President Harris' candidacy might be coming "back down to earth" after the U.S. stock market plunged.

"They just a little bit ago this morning, posted the ‘brat’ meme with ‘the stock market is tanking’ in the font," Price said during a panel discussion on CNN, noting that the Trump campaign was using Kamala Harris memes to mock the vice president. 

U.S. stocks tumbled as trading began Monday, continuing Friday's sharp drop after a global sell-off. The plunge continues to stoke fears of a recession. 

"That everything that has been in this honeymoon period might seem kind of silly compared to when people are looking at their 401Ks or when they’re going to start looking at gas prices, or they’re looking at what it costs at the grocery store, that the hype that is kind of coming back down to earth. We might be entering that phase that the Trump campaign has been waiting for," Price said.

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CNN's John Berman said Harris needed to be careful to not make the same mistakes President Biden did when talking about the economy in painting "a super rosy picture when people might not be feeling it." Berman said Harris has remained conscious of how Americans were feeling about the economy. 

"It gets more challenging if the numbers aren‘t so good. So that is something that the Harris team, I don‘t think, were thinking about when they began their campaign 15 days ago. But now [they] have to think about it," Berman said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled by as much as 1,300 points, while the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 also fell.

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A weak jobs report and shrinking manufacturing activity in the world's largest economy, coupled with dismal forecasts from the big technology firms, pushed the Nasdaq 100 and Nasdaq Composite into a correction last week.

The weak jobs data also triggered what is known as the "Sahm Rule," seen by many as a historically accurate recession indicator.

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The "Sahm Rule" stipulates that the economy is in the early stages of a recession when the 3-month moving average of the jobless rate is at least a half-percentage point higher than the 12-month low. Over the past three months, the unemployment rate has averaged 4.13%, which is 0.63 percentage points higher than the 3.5% rate recorded in July 2023, crossing that threshold.

Fox News' Matthew Kazin contributed to this report.