Gene Simmons has laid out a scenario in which President Donald Trump will almost certainly get re-elected in 2020. The KISS bassist/vocalist — who is a former contestant on Trump's "The Celebrity Apprentice" series — made his comments while discussing his new business venture as Chief Evangelist Officer for Invictus MD, a publicly traded cannabis startup, with TheStreet's executive editor Brian Sozzi. Simmons, who predicted in the months following the last U.S. presidential election that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would plow past 23,000 (it currently stands at over 25,000) as optimism over corporate earnings turbocharged, remains extremely bullish about the outlook for the U.S. economy. He told TheStreet (see video below): "We will see the day shortly — [within] two years, it's gonna break 30,000. Let me give you the scenario. Ready? Saudi, Israel and Egypt form a public alliance of cooperation. Flights from Israel are gonna fly into Saudi Arabia; it's gonna be a different world. One. Two: North and South Korea do actually come together. Don't worry about the diatribes and all that — that's not 'diet' and 'tribes'; it's a diatribe. They are gonna come together; Kim Jong-un has already started to dismantle [North Korea's nuclear weapons program]. President Trump, who I know and understand, is part of vitriol and getting up there and… He has no… It's kind of Tourette's kind of stuff. But that doesn't matter. "I don't care what anybody says. Do it! Make it happen!" he continued. "So there have been other presidents who have been better with media, from [Ronald] Reagan on up. But at the end of the day, people in America are concerned about two things. They don't know about TheStreet or the Dow. Is my family safe? Is my country safe? That's foreign policy. Can I feed my family? That's commerce. Those are the only things they care about. The rest is for the academics in New York and L.A. to argue about. In the middle America, [all they care about is] 'Can I feed my family?' and 'Am I safe?'" Simmons went on to say: "I don't know about you, but this president is gonna get re-elected, whether you like it or not, if there is peace and confluence, congruence between North and South Korea and the Dow is about the break 30,000 before the end of his presidency. I'm calling it. If that happens, he's our next president." Asked if he was surprised by how markets have reacted to the Trump presidency, Simmons said: "Well, as you know by the numbers, as he was coming in, there was a dip and it was at 17,000. Buy low, sell high. Isn't that what you learned with grandma? Right? Mr. [Warren] Buffett understands this and all that. When the Dow goes down, believe in America. The president was going to… He started to announce it: 'I'm gonna lower [the corporate tax] to 15 or 20…', whatever it is. The Wall Street just kind of [went], 'That our kind of guy: pro business.' You get a stack of papers like this to start a new company. What are you trying to do? Drive every company overseas except to France where you can't fire anybody. Yay, socialism! And so what he did was make it business friendly, and so, all of a sudden, the Dow is exploding. 'Oh, the Dow is at 24,764, now 24,765. We're down 50 points.' Are you kidding me?" Last September, Simmons told "The Strombo Show" that it was "too early" to judge Trump's presidency. "Do I think he said a lot of stupid things? Oh, yeah," Simmons said. "He says stupid things, and so do you, and so [do] I. I'm not validating it, but… There's not a human being that walks on the face of the planet that privately hasn't made racist or anti-Semitic or anti-women jokes, or anti-Irish jokes. Privately, everybody does it. He is a Tourette's president who will say whatever he wants, and he doesn't give a fuck if you approve of him, and he's doing the job for one dollar. I like that." Gene also defended Trump's occasional off-color remarks and frequently outrageous statements, saying: "I don't know anybody here who hasn't said stupid things publicly or privately, and if they get outed, if you get caught on tape, from Mel Gibson to everyone… I know Mel very well, and I'm Jewish myself, and he said some stupid things, racist things, anti-Semitic things when he was, you know, high or drunk or whatever. But I know the guy, I know that he gave a twenty-million dollar check to start mending kids privately and never talked about it, I know the guy that goes out of his way to help refugees and stuff like that and doesn't advertise it. It's your deeds, not what you say. You've said potty words and so have I. So I'm gonna give the guy who was duly elected a chance to show us what he can do, and then I'll judge his legacy." Simmons previously confirmed that KISS was inivited to perform at Trump's inauguration but turned it down because it was "not a good idea." Simmons said that he "didn't necessarily vote for President Trump or candidate Clinton" in the 2016 presidential election, adding that "it's really nobody's damn business" whom he voted for. "I think you'd be surprised by my choice — but he's President Trump, because even if you don't like the man, you must respect the office of the presidency and the will of the Electoral College," he said.
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