This is an adapted excerpt from the April 7 episode of “Morning Joe.”
The markets are in crisis following Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement last week, with experts warning that a recession could be on the horizon. According to a new survey from CNBC, a majority of CEOs, 69%, now say they expect a recession. That comes just days after JPMorgan’s economics team raised their recession probability to 60%.
The administration has tried to brush off these recession fears, sending out their top officials to defend Trump’s tariffs and pretend like there’s nothing to see here. Trump’s ultra-wealthy Cabinet members, like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, are taking to the airwaves to tell middle-class and working-class Americans, entrepreneurs, people who have spent their entire lives building up their family businesses, that “there’s nothing to worry about; this had to be done.”
If you hear Republicans saying they can’t do anything, that’s just a lie.
Although the focus right now is on the stock market and the banks, the people who will be hurt most by Trump’s trade war aren’t the millionaires and billionaires in his administration, it’s working-class Americans — the people who can afford it the least. And right now, those hardworking Americans are being told by Trump’s billionaire buddies that there’s nothing to see here.
Regardless of how you feel about tariffs, what we’re witnessing is a self-induced war that Trump, with the backing of the Republican Party, started.
Since November’s election, I have been warning Republicans that they needed to be careful. The U.S. has the strongest economy in the world, but it has to be managed wisely. And now, Republicans are standing by as Trump drives that strong economy into the ground.
Republicans are not powerless here. The GOP-controlled Congress has the power to stop Trump’s trade war. They have the power to moderate it. They have the constitutional power to decide if 46% tariffs are too much to push on Vietnam. They have the power to make this less tough on American businesses. They have the power to talk and negotiate with the president and come up with something that’s not quite as extreme. If you hear Republicans saying they can’t do anything, that’s just a lie.
Americans can’t fall for these lies. They must understand that when this administration goes on television and says that this has to be done, they’re not telling the truth. And when Republicans refuse to stand up to Trump and tell the American people they can’t do anything about it, that’s not true either. It’s doublespeak.