Trump Is Laughing In Your Face With His Tariff Lies

Guest article by Andrew Bates, former White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary during the Biden-Harris Administration

Editorial credit: Steve Travelguide / Shutterstock.com

Every single American is paying the biggest tax increase on working families since the Great Depression — Trump’s tariffs. Local news is a constant stream of reporting on the financial pain tariffs are causing all over the country as they raise the prices Trump promised to lower on “Day One.”

But yesterday the White House highlighted one of their top economists, Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran, claiming on Fox Business that there has been “no material macroeconomic impact” from tariffs.

Miran, who Trump just promoted, has multiple Freudian slips in the video, saying “consumers thus far have not seen any increase — any — sorry, any material macroeconomic increase from prices — sorry, from tariffs, at all.”

It’s not hard to see why Miran had trouble keeping a straight face.

Imagine telling the surging number of manufacturing workers who’ve been laid off that losing your job isn’t “material.” Or telling a single parent that the extra money every single one of them now has to pay for groceries isn’t “material.”

Trump inherited an economy that The Economist magazine called the “Envy of the World” on its cover late last year. He told the country his agenda would strengthen that economy, making it take off like a “rocket ship.” By March of this year The Economist ran another cover, “The revised outlook,” which pictured Trump pouring gasoline — tariffs and chaos — onto the American economy.

The tariffs are leeching money right out of the pockets of hardworking Americans and redistributing it to billionaires. The tariffs directly fund the “One, Big Beautiful Bill Act’s” debt-busting tax giveaways for the rich. So do the biggest Medicaid cuts in history. The rest of the price tag goes on the country’s credit card, fueling inflation.

All this from a president and a Congress who promised to fight for working families and against out-of-touch elites.

Trump and Republicans know their economic agenda is bombing with the American people — it’s why they rarely talk about their chief “accomplishment.” Instead, President Trump’s spending his time building a new White House ballroom (I’m serious), choosing which performing artists win Kennedy Center Awards, and causing upheaval as he sells out to the Swamp he swore he’d “drain.”

He recently broke his promise to release the Department of Justice’s files on the most infamous pedophile in modern history, his late close friend Jeffrey Epstein. Trump has sputtered when asked about this, even lashing out at his own base.

Trump’s Epstein cover-up discredits his main economic and cultural pitch to voters: “Sure, I’m an asshole. But this asshole is on your side.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

For example, American citizens have had their due process rights violated — even being deported — while Jeffrey Epstein’s top accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is moved from maximum to minimum security. That was after the number-two official at DOJ spent hours meeting with Maxwell to hear the convicted child sex trafficker’s case for a pardon.

Ask yourself this. If the cabal of predators Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey fight in the first season of True Detective were in charge of the federal government, would they govern all that differently than Trump?

To that point, the country knows one of the few people who has done “materially” better since Trump took office: the President himself. He’s granting special access to whichever fat cat buys the most of his personal meme coin. He accepted a $400 million plane from Qatar — which funds Hamas — for his personal use. Donald Trump Jr. founded a private club called “Executive Branch” for ultra-rich individuals pursuing a better relationship with the Trump Administration. Can you imagine the shades of red Sean Hannity would turn if Hunter Biden did any of what Kim Jong Jr. and Jim Jong Eric do in one day?

This culture of corruption is boiling over and scalding America’s economy.
Washington’s for-elites, by-elites agenda is turning into real pain for real people, as my colleagues at The Cost Coalition are warning about every day, sharing coverage of how Americans are being hurt by the tariffs and the Big, Ugly Bill — in their own words.

Floridian Gale Kent recently told her local news station, WKMG, “The prices have gone up...Tariffs are paid by the consumer. The companies pay it, but then they pass on the costs.”

Apparently, the White House doesn’t think Gale’s struggles are “material.”

“Let them eat tariffs” is a very elitist way for a self-described “populist” to lead.

That’s because Trump is not a populist at all. He’s just an asshole.

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Andrew Bates was the White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary in the Biden-Harris Administration and a national spokesperson on the Biden campaign in 2020.