Tag: blame
Peter Navarro

MAGA Media Blame Advisers For Trump Tariff Nightmare

Numerous right-wing media figures are placing blame for the chaos and confusion over Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs on two of his top economic appointees — senior trade adviser Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — rather than on Trump himself.

When announced, Donald Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs amounted to one of the largest tax hikes in American history, and despite being labeled “reciprocal,” they had absolutely nothing to do with foreign tariff rates. These new rates, the highest in more than 100 years, caused widespread market volatility and are projected to raise costs for the average American family by thousands of dollars while also increasing the risks of a recession — if they go into effect.

A week after announcing the various tariff rates on dozens of countries, Trump announced a 90-day “pause” — after his press secretary previously called reports of such a pause “fake news” — aside from a universal 10% rate on every country except China, which now has a 145% tariff rate. The Trump administration then amended the tariff rate for Chinese-exported consumer electronics to 20%. This followed comments from Lutnick about a different tariff for electronics, specifically a sectoral tariff on semiconductors.

Pro-Trump media figures on Fox and elsewhere have been blaming Lutnick and Navarro for tariff-related confusion over the past week:

  • Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich: “Some confusion was spurred from the mixed messaging” from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Heinrich aired a clip of Lutnick saying on ABC’s This Week that consumer electronics will be “exempt from the reciprocal tariffs” but will soon receive their own sectoral tariff. Earlier in the segment, Heinrich reported that Trump “said they are still subject to that 20% charge he imposed over fentanyl.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/14/25]
  • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo blamed confusion on Lutnick and Navarro saying different things on different news programs. In an interview with Trump National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Bartiromo said: “You had some of your colleagues out — Howard Lutnick was on one show, Peter Navarro was on the other show — and, you know, with some of them saying, well, there are no exemptions. And then somebody else saying, well, they’re going to be in a different bucket. It created some confusion.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 4/14/25]
  • Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone: “I'm so glad he made that clarification on Air Force One. That's why it’s so good to have the president himself come out, because they’ve had some messaging missteps — not him, people underneath him.” Host Maria Bartiromo agreed with a guest who said, “I think this back-and-forth, this confusion that I feel after reading about this all weekend long is definitely part of the strategy in keeping the other side guessing what’s going on.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 4/14/25]
  • Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon: “Let me be blunt. Lutnick, who was Elon’s pick for secretary treasury, I think he’s close to being an unmitigated disaster. We should see a lot less of Lutnick on TV.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 4/14/25]
  • Fox Business host Charles Payne: “Mixed and confusing messaging” from Navarro and Lutnick “has the same gut-wrenching impact as an unnecessary holding penalty that negates a touchdown.” Payne also wrote: “Some people said I was too hard on my old friend Peter Navarro on Wednesday, but I was hard on messaging from him and Lutnick.” [Twitter/X, 4/13/25]
  • Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino quoted an anonymous “senior Wall Street executive w ties to the Trump White House,” saying: “Susie (Wiles) needs to get control of Lutnick. He is a wrecking ball.” Gasparino added that his source “described @howardlutnick’s comments about the temporary nature of the tariff exemptions as ‘off message.’” Gasparino’s quote continued: “Now the market will open way down again since it appears the administration is totally confused.” [Twitter/X, 4/13/25]
  • The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “If you wanna see a real bull market, the president should fire Peter Navarro today.” Shapiro added: “It would be stupid to continue running full speed into a wall in the name of Peter Navarro's benighted idiocy with regard to trade.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 4/10/25]
  • Shapiro: Navarro “should be nowhere near trade policy.” Shapiro also said: “Peter Navarro, who is the architect of much of this trade policy, a man who used to be a zero-growther, actually, in his early career, and then called himself Ron Vara in his own writings to create a fake name under which to attribute many of his writings. It was like Voldemort. His last name is Navarro. Get it? Ron Vara? Get it? You don't? It's dumb.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 4/9/25]
  • MAGA personality Ian Miles Cheong: “Navarro is out. He f’d everything up.” In an earlier post, Cheong wrote: “Navarro needs to go. Thank God Bessent was there.” [Twitter/X, 4/10/25, 4/9/25]
  • Trump operative Roger Stone: “The economy? More Bessent, less Lutnick.” [Twitter/X, 4/9/25]
  • Washington Examiner senior writer David Harsanyi: “Navarro is the Fauci of finance. I hope he's done.” [Twitter/X, 4/9/25]
  • Fox Business host Dagen McDowell ridiculed Navarro for “his reciprocal trade-girl math that's kneecapping the United States.” McDowell added: “The quicker that they get him off of TV and away from numbers, the better.” Co-host Jackie DeAngelis agreed, adding: “I actually think they realize that. I think they realize Bessent should be the point person on this, and they're putting him out there. I think they're gonna pull back on Lutnick, I think they're gonna pull back on Navarro a little bit too. They need to get clear on their messaging and make sure there's no nuance in there.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 4/7/25]

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Leland Dudek

Trump's New Social Security Chief Blames DOGE For Massive Cuts And Chaos

Leland Dudek, the acting Social Security commissioner installed by President Donald Trump, reportedly admitted in a closed-door meeting that Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is behind massive cuts planned at the vital agency.

The Washington Post reports that Dudek made the admission in a meeting held with advocates for the elderly and disabled, legal aides, and senior members of agency staff. According to a meeting participant’s notes, Dudek described DOGE as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs.”

Dudek said the billionaire Republican donor’s emissaries will “make mistakes” but pushed to give them access to the Social Security system that millions of Americans rely on.

Dudek was installed after former acting commissioner Michelle King resigned in February after refusing to give DOGE access to sensitive government data. By contrast, Dudek worked to give DOGE access to data even before getting his promotion.

Last week, the agency announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs despite ongoing staffing concerns and stretched resources affecting wait times and disability hearings.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who served as IRS commissioner under President Joe Biden, told CNBC on Monday that DOGE cuts could lead to a collapse of the Social Security system in one to three months.

“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley said, and advised people to save funds immediately.

DOGE’s actions come as rhetoric from Trump and Musk has increased concerns that an attack on Social Security—which was signed into law in 1935 by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt—could be imminent.

During his speech to a joint address of Congress on Tuesday, Trump repeated a lie from DOGE that millions of Social Security payments are being made to people over 160 years old. The lie has been repeatedly debunked. In reality, the old computer system maintaining agency records inaccurately shows recipient ages, and virtually none of those people receive payments. But Trump’s rhetoric helps to undermine trust in the system.

Similarly, in an interview with conservative podcaster Joe Rogan, Musk repeated the longtime conservative lie that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.” Invoking such a fiction has often been used as an excuse to attack the system. Musk is the richest person in the world, and unlike most Americans, he has no need for Social Security savings. Killing the program would affect them, but he (and Trump) would be unscathed.

DOGE isn’t being welcomed with open arms throughout the government. On Wednesday, employees of the U.S. African Development Foundation blocked DOGE representatives from accessing their headquarters in Washington, D.C., even as DOGE employees tried to get into the agency’s data systems.

Following revelations of DOGE attacks on multiple systems and the bigoted beliefs of some on the DOGE team, disapproval of the organization has been rising. But the threat to foundational American institutions continues.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Carly Fiorina Right About Environmentalists And California Drought Woes, Farm Group Say

Carly Fiorina Right About Environmentalists And California Drought Woes, Farm Group Say

By David Knowles and Alan Bjerga, Bloomberg News (TNS)

The water wars have begun.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is blaming “overzealous liberal environmentalists” for the water shortages caused by California’s ongoing drought. In a radio interview earlier in the week with Glenn Beck, and in a Tuesday op-ed in Time, Fiorina made the case that the water rationing instituted by Governor Jerry Brown could have been avoided. The problem, Fiorina says, is that the state has allowed environmental activists to influence policy.

“Specifically, these policies have resulted in the diversion of more than 300 billion gallons of water away from farmers in the Central Valley and into the San Francisco Bay in order to protect the Delta smelt, an endangered fish that environmentalists have continued to champion at the expense of Californians. This water is simply being washed out to sea, instead of being channeled to the people who desperately need it,” Fiorina wrote in Time. “While they have watched this water wash out to sea, liberals have simultaneously prevented the construction of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades.”

Environmental groups staunchly disagree, saying weather patterns are to blame. “We simply don’t have rain or snow pack and are suffering the worst California drought since water agencies and weather trackers started keeping records,” Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club’s California chapter, told the Huffington Post.

Yet many California farm groups agree with Fiorina, tracing their woes to 1992 federal legislation meant to protect endangered species and landscapes that permanently reduced their water allocation. Since then, lawsuits have further eroded farmer water rights, they say, slowly turning off the tap in the name of environmental goals that may or may not be met.

“That’s why this is worse than the droughts of the 1970s and early 1990s,” said Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. This year, between December 20 and Jan. 15, about 318,000 acre feet that could have supplied his region was pumped out to protect endangered species. That water, had it been available, would have allowed for a bare-bones federal water allocation that would have kept alive trees that now will be bulldozed, he said.

“We’ve had a large rededication from ag and municipal use to the environment, and it’s been chewing away at us. It dramatically hurts the flexibility of California to deal with these circumstances.”

Activists intentionally distort agriculture’s use of water to further anti-farming arguments, said Joel Nelsen, chief executive officer of California Citrus Mutual, which represents growers of oranges, lemons, grapefruit, and other fruit.

For example, an oft-quoted number that farms handle 80 percent of the state’s water use intentionally leaves out about half of the supply, the part earmarked for environmental protection, he said. Add that in, and farming uses about 40 percent of all water, he said.

The California Department of Water Resources, which tracks use, agrees. “The farmers are right,” said agency spokesman Doug Carlson. From 2001-2010, average net water use in California, counting environmental purposes, was about 47 percent environmental, 43 percent for farming and 10 percent city use. Take out environmental water as a category, however, and farming jumps to almost 77 percent of usage, with city use rising to one-fifth, according to state statistics.

That’s the sort of spin Nelson said unfairly singles out farmers, who already have reduced their “crop per drop” in response to less available water, as villains in the water crisis. “What bothers me most about the environmental community is its incredible hypocrisy,” in which activists oppose everything except what makes their own lives more convenient, he said.

“They won’t go after the dam at Hetch Hetchy because that supplies water to San Francisco,” he said, referring to a century-old federal project that devastated an ecosystem to supply municipal water. “They go after agriculture because it doesn’t affect them. Well, we produce the food that people eat. That seems like a pretty good use of water to me.”

Environmental groups like Sierra Club reject the notion that the blame for the state’s water conservation problem lies with the decision to not build new dams and reservoirs.

“The fact is that over half the water that falls in California is diverted for human-industrial consumption. That means that half of natural water flows get to enter the rivers and streams and estuaries that support the salmon industry and the aquifers that are actually tapped by farmers,” said Michelle Myers, director of the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter. “In this time of extreme drought, I think we need to be smarter consumers, with better irrigation techniques, while making communities more resilient by capturing storm water and actually recycling the water that they use, rather than investing outrageous sums of money on infrastructure projects like dams.”

Photo: Pacific Southwest Region via Flickr

Obama’s Paradox Problem

WASHINGTON — Call it the Party-of-Government Paradox: If the nation’s capital looks dysfunctional, it will come back to hurt President Obama and the Democrats, even if the Republicans are primarily responsible for the dysfunction.

Then there is the Bipartisanship Paradox: No matter how far the president bends over backward to appeal to or appease the Republicans — no matter how nice, conciliatory, friendly or reasonable he tries to be — voters will judge him according to the results. And the evidence since 2009 is that accommodation won’t get Obama much anyway.

This creates the Election Paradox: Up to a point, Republicans in Congress can afford to let their own ratings fall well below the president’s, as long as they drag him further into negative territory. If the president’s ratings are poor next year, Democrats won’t be able to defeat enough Republicans to take back the House and hold the Senate. The GOP can win if the mood is terribly negative toward Washington because voters see Obama as the man in charge.

Everything the Republicans are doing makes sense in light of the three paradoxes, even though, by the numbers, they have been the big losers from the summer’s debt ceiling fiasco and their broader refusal to cooperate with Obama.

A Pew Research Center survey released last week showed Obama with a 49 percent disapproval rating, but Congress with a 70 percent unfavorable rating. So Obama is still “ahead.” The Democrats are also better regarded than the Republicans — or, perhaps more accurately, less poorly regarded. “Only” 50 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party; 59 percent had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.

But the trend on the president’s numbers has been downward, and the Republicans seem willing to pay a high price to keep them moving that way. Remember: The core GOP argument is that government can’t do much good and generally makes everyone’s life worse. Democrats are the ones who insist that government can solve problems and improve people’s lives. If government isn’t doing that — if it is discredited and made to look foolish — guess whose side of the debate is weakened?

Obama’s central task is to break out of the three paradoxes, not just to get re-elected but also to get anything done. Having tried conciliation, his only alternative is to build pressure on the Republicans. He needs to get them to act, or, failing that, to make clear who is responsible for Washington’s paralysis.

That’s why his coming speech on jobs has to describe a program that’s broad and imaginative enough to capture the public’s attention. The middle-of-the-road voters his advisers want to win back look first for chief executives to be strong, decisive, and principled, not at how many millimeters they are from the political center.

Despite reports that the White House is split over how much Obama should ask Congress to do, the president has signaled that he understands the stakes. “My attitude is that my job is to present the best plans possible,” Obama said in an interview Tuesday with talk-show host Tom Joyner. “Congress needs to act. If Congress does not act, then I’m going to be going on the road and talking to folks, and this next election very well may end up being a referendum on whose vision of America is better.”

Obama hates to bring up the nasty fact that we have political parties, but very soon, he will have to point out that it is Republicans in Congress who are blocking his program. They will either have to start worrying about its low ratings, or begin to pay a real price for obstruction.

The model, of course, is Harry Truman. In a lovely book on the 1948 election, The Last Campaign, Zachary Karabell explains the problems that Truman’s attacks on the “do-nothing” Republican Congress created for his GOP opponent, Thomas E. Dewey.

“Dewey couldn’t distance himself too much from Congress or he would lose the support of his own party and perhaps jeopardize Republican chances in the congressional elections,” Karabell wrote. “Yet he needed to create some space between himself and the Congress in order to avoid being dragged down in their wake. It was a precarious position.” Indeed it was.

Truman, it’s true, didn’t get to this strategy until the election year. But the unemployment rate in 1948 averaged below 4 percent. Obama doesn’t have the luxury of waiting.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.

(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group

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