The Kudlow Portfolio is tanking.

On Feb. 25, Larry Kudlow, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, suggested it was a good time to buy stocks. “The virus story is not going to last forever,” Kudlow said on CNBC around 2:30 p.m. “To me, if you are an investor out there and you have a long-term point of view, I would suggest very seriously taking a look at the market, the stock market, that is a lot cheaper than it was a week or two ago.”

At the time, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) index was around 3,128. Two weeks later it closed at 2,746. If you took Kudlow’s advice, you were the dumb money buying in a selloff. You’d be down more than 12%.

Kudlow hedged his suggestion with the “long term” reference. But it was still a foolish thing to say, and Kudlow’s not the only one saying it. Trump himself is a frequent stock-market commentator (always buy, never sell) who is now dismissing the recent plunge in stocks as a panicky reaction to “fake news”—the coronavirus outbreak. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been another occasional up-talker of stocks. We all know the game: Trump’s minions must say anything to goose stocks and aid Trump’s reelection odds.

We know now that Kudlow issued his buy recommendation in the early stages of a worsening downturn that might end the bull-market rally that stretches all the way back to 2009. The coronavirus has unnerved investors because nobody can gauge the severity and duration of an epidemic forcing closures, cancellations and lost business worldwide. On top of that, a spat between oil producers Russia and Saudi Arabia led to a crash in oil prices and new worries about energy firms going bust.

Kudlow couldn’t have known all this, right? Shouldn’t he get a pass for an innocent mistake? How about no. Kudlow’s recommendation came with stocks down 7.6% from their peak, which might sound like a nice dip-buying opportunity in normal times. But this was at a time when the coronavirus death toll in Italy hit double digits, the mayor of San Francisco declared a state of emergency and public health experts were warning of an exponential spike in infections. The volatility index (^VIX) which measures uncertainty in financial markets, had doubled in a week and was well into the range often associated with market turmoil.

Kudlow, 72, is not an economist, even though he served as “chief economist” at investing firm Bear Stearns in the 1980s. Kudlow was a successful Wall Street salesman who capitalized on an upbeat personality to land a job as a commentator and show host at CNBC, starting in 2002, which made him famous. He’s a fervent supply-sider favoring tax cuts and laissez-faire policies as the best path to a strong economy, one reason Trump tapped him to replace Gary Cohn at the White House in 2018.