He Said What Now?

Sunday was a doozy when it came to Trump’s answers to reporters’ questions and his latest wild pronouncements

Image courtesy of NBC News

On Sunday, the depths of Trump’s dangerous idiocy were further plumbed, proving once again that we have yet to see the bottom.

It began with an interview by NBC News’s Kristen Welker. Trump delivered jaw dropping answers about due process, the Constitution and his march toward authoritarianism, even while lying non-stop about the economy, inflation and the effects of his tariffs. He belittled the plight of small businesses and basically told parents to suck it up while he spends lavishly on a military parade for his birthday. To cap it off, he reiterated threats on our allies.

But he wasn’t done. Later Sunday night, Trump announced he was slapping 100 percent tariffs on foreign-made movies—his first foray into putting import taxes on services—and planning to reopen Alcatraz as an island prison.

That’s a lot to unpack, so I’ll do my best to address a response to each along with some thoughts on where all this is coming from.

The “I don’t know” president

When Trump was a witness in his own civil cases, he often answered with “I don’t recall” or even pleaded the Fifth, sometimes hundreds of times in a single deposition, to avoid self-incrimination.

That strategy wouldn’t work so well in a voluntary interview, so with the press he’s taken to responding “I don’t know,” even where it’s clear as a matter of his job title and oath that he ought to.

At a key point during Sunday’s interview, Welker directly asked him about due process. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, she began, had stated that everyone in the U.S., whether citizens or non-citizens, is entitled to due process.

“Do you agree?” she asked Trump.

“I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” he responded.

Now, call me old fashioned. But when you swear an oath as incoming president, to the best of your ability, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” that necessarily implies you know what the darned text says.

For the record, the Fifth Amendment expressly states that “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law….” It doesn’t distinguish between citizens and non-citizens.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand that this means everyone in the U.S., irrespective of citizenship status, is entitled to due process. To say you “don’t know” whether you can agree with the clear language of the Fifth Amendment means you aren’t even trying to defend the Constitution. Rather, you are dismissing and defying it.

Welker, to her credit, at this point presented the correct follow up question.

“Don’t you have to uphold the Constitution of the United States as President?” she asked, somehow not leaping out of her chair to throttle him.

Trump’s answer to this question alone would have been grounds for immediate impeachment, were we blessed with anything resembling a functioning Congress under the GOP.

“I don’t know,” Trump deflected. “I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me. And they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

Spoiler alert: His lawyers have been telling him that he won a ruling that he actually lost 9-0. Trump has done nothing to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García, despite a direct court from SCOTUS.

And on Trump’s steady march toward authoritarianism, Trump responded to his critics, saying that he “won the election” and “they had their chance … and lost big.”

Again, call me an old fashioned rule of law type, but winning the election doesn’t mean you get to trample upon the Constitution, even if that’s what you promised to do.

And what is the point of a presidential oath if you can do it with fingers crossed behind your back? A president’s primary responsibility is to the defense and protection of the Constitution, but this one obdurately says, “I don’t know. Ask my lawyers.”

There’s an established pattern of Trump passing the buck on key questions like this. When he was sued for hundreds of millions by the state of New York for tax and financial fraud, his defense was that he simply signed off on whatever the accountants said. He did this even though it was his name on the disclosures. This was his way of immunizing himself from legal responsibility, with a wink and a nod to his CFO and his lawyers who knew what they were supposed to achieve for him.

But it didn’t work then, and it shouldn’t work now. Trump lost that case and was assessed massive fines, and his accountants and fixers wound up in jail.

Judges and justices also read the news. They know what Trump’s game is. And the underlings who lie and cover for him today would do well to remember that it rarely ends well for the Allen Weisselbergs and Michael Cohens of the world.

Dear Leader says live with less, while he spends more

Trump’s Achilles heel is the economy. He was reelected in large part because he promised to bring prices down, but instead consumers will be soon faced with huge spikes in the cost of just about everything, as well as the high possibility of empty store shelves. This is because container shipping from China is about to plunge into deep freeze from the trade war Trump began.

Trump’s response to Welker’s questions about the economy not only showed he was out-of-touch and badly misinformed, but also that he doesn’t really care what the public has to endure. That may fly with his MAGA faithful, but it will sour independents on him even further. And they are the group that decides elections.

Let’s look at some of the more egregious statements. When Welker asked Trump whether he was considering tariff relief for small businesses, he snapped at her, demanding to know why she was so concerned with “a couple of little businesses.” Trump insisted the tariffs would be great for auto manufacturing, and that the press should focus on that. He claimed car makers “are gonna make a fortune!”—which itself is baseless and demonstrably wrong.

He also falsely insisted gas was $1.98 a gallon while egg prices had fallen by 84 percent by the time of the Easter Day egg roll at the White House. Some have pointed out that Trump was likely referring to the wholesale price of gasoline, which has been hovering around $2.00 for the last six months. However, that is nowhere near the retail price that consumers pay. Here’s what wholesale prices of gas looked like over the last six months.

When Welker pressed him on the state of the U.S. economy, Trump pulled a “heads-I-win, tales-you-lose” move. He actually claimed the good parts are the Trump economy while the bad parts are the Biden economy.

Trump also brushed aside questions of economic hardship for families, with jargon that would make Soviet propagandists and Chairman Mao proud. He actually lectured parents to give their children fewer dolls and pencils this year:

“I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls…. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

This from a man who has a gold-plated toilet.

To make things worse, he said all this while insisting on a military parade costing tens of millions of dollars and coinciding with his birthday.

But his insistence that up is down on basic prices of everyday items could prove his Waterloo. Inflation, paired with empty store shelves, could finally snap some Republican voters out of their stupor. After all, they seem only to care when it affects their grocery bill, their gas budget, their Christmas.

Don’t make me force you to join us

Two stories that seem never to die involve Trump’s obsession with making Canada the 51st state and forcibly annexing the island of Greenland by seizing it from Denmark.

Already, Trump’s bellosity has backfired. The Conservatives in Canada had held a commanding lead in the polls until Trump’s threats and tariffs. Suddenly, anything that smacked of MAGA became unpatriotic, and public sentiment began to swing sharply. (The colors are reversed in Canada; Liberals are red while Conservatives are blue.)

The Liberals went on to score a historic come-from-behind victory.

(A similar dynamic played out in Australia, where the center-left Labor swept the national election in a landslide against the conservatives. In both elections, the conservative leader actually lost his seat in parliament.)

When asked by Welker whether he would rule out military force to force Canada to become a part of the U.S., Trump said that he didn’t think it would ever get to that point—while still implying that we wanted that final result.

But on Greenland, he warned again that “something could happen” with that territory, adding, “I’ll be honest, we need that for national and international security.”

It bears repeating that there would be no precedent for a member of NATO such as the U.S. attacking a fellow member to seize its territory. Presumably, Denmark’s NATO allies would be obliged under Article V of the NATO agreement to come to Denmark’s defense. That article states in no uncertain terms,

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and … will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

The conundrum posed by the U.S. threat could force NATO to break up with us in order to make clear that it will defend Denmark against military aggression by us. And that might be the terrifying reason behind Trump’s saber rattling.

Tariffs on foreign films and reopening an island prison

Later on Sunday, Trump announced he was imposing a 100 percent tariff on movies made outside of the United States after declaring foreign film production to be a “national security threat.”

I know, I know.

Specifically, per the New York Times, Trump stated in a social media post that

he had authorized Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, to begin the process of taxing “any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” Mr. Trump added, “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”

So now we have national emergencies over 1) fentanyl that is not coming over our border with Canada, 2) a trade deficit that we have lived with for decades, and 3) a supposed conspiracy by other countries to destroy our film industry.

Congress is doing nothing to withdraw Trump’s power to impose historically high import taxes. It has failed to act, even though none of these comprises an actual emergency, just as we are not being invaded by Tren de Aragua gang members at the direction of Venezuela.

A tariff on foreign films presents a massive escalation in ongoing trade wars. So far, Trump has only hit actual goods with tariffs. Moving to service tariffs opens the U.S. up to retaliation on its own exported services, in everything from entertainment to insurance to banking.

To say Trump hasn’t thought this through would be to admit the obvious. So where is he getting this insane idea?

Here’s one disturbing possibility: the actor Jon Voight. A few months ago, Trump had named the right-wing celebrity as one of his “Hollywood ambassadors.” Since then Voight has been going around to industry leaders and unions seeking input on how to keep more of the production of movies inside the U.S. Most industry experts and politicians believe the answer is stronger tax credits to incentivize productions to hire local crews. Tariffs have never really been on the table…until now.

But State Sen. Ben Allen, a Los Angeles-area Democrat, recently told Politico that he heard from Voight days ago about the possibility of new foreign movie tariffs. And on Sunday, Trump purported to make them a reality, though the details remain, as usual, quite unclear.

The U.S. currently runs a trade surplus on its entertainment exports, so if Hollywood gets hit with retaliatory tariffs, it’s going to create yet another shockwave for our economy.

I’ll close out today’s summary with some theater of the absurd: Trump’s proposed reopening of the notorious Alcatraz prison, which is now a tourist attraction and part of the National Park service. He is eager for the fabled prison to once again hold hardened criminals.

This is a distraction that isn’t likely to get very far, given the huge costs and big cuts already planned for the Justice Department budget. But if Trump ever does manage to reopen it, I have a proposal for who should be one of its first occupants after 2028.