LO ANGELES.–Showing that Fox News is no rubber stamp of 78-year-old President Trump, Fox News host Martha McCallum fought with Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, a fierce defender of Trump domestic and foreign policy. McCallum likes to stand up to Trump White House especially on the controversial tariffs applied to many countries previously slapping high tariffs on the U.S. Trump’s tariff policies have been blamed for causing the latest stock market meltdown where the Dow Jones Industrial saw its average drop from over 45,000 Dec. 20024 to under 38,000, a 16% drop. McCallumn challenged Miller on Trump’s tariff policy, nearly universally condemned by most investors and economics. JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon said the country under Trump tariff policy was heading to recession. Billionaire hedge fund trader Bill Ackman said Trump could send the economy into a “nuclear winter.”
McCallum thinks she’s acting independently but, like most journalists, knows nothing about economics, or, more to the point, Wall Street. “We have president who has now actually taken the necessary action to bring back American industrial power and might, so that we will have real hard deterrence in the country, real hard strength in his country. And the middle-class worker, the families can earn an income that they can retire on,” Miller shot back to McCallum after questioning what Trump was doing for the middle class. McCallum challenged Miller to think about real middle class families enduring the hardship of higher prices and uncertainty on Wall Street. Today’s rally had the Dow Jones Industrials up at midday over 2,700 points, the largest midday rally in U.S. history. Wherever the market ends up, it’s a colossal vindication of Trump’s policy. Today’s rally shows the fake news is wrong.
Miller tried to get McCallum to see there were real benefits to the long-term stability of the economy by renegotiating tariffs with various countries, previously taking advantage of the U.S. for years. “We are on the verge now because of President Trump’s strength and leadership of fixing our entire global trading system,” Miller told McCallum. Miller said the U.S. could no longer accept the huge trade deficits from Canada, Mexico, EU and China, all of which took advantage of the U.S. free market trading system. Trump is the only president in U.S. history to attempt to level the playing field on duties and tariffs. Judging by Wall Street’s snap-back today, all the Democrat and fake news propaganda hoped to discredit Trump as much as possible. Fake news likes to denigrate Fox News as sycophantic Trump propaganda network, when it is anything but. Fox news has its share of Trump haters.
So, the big question news consumers should ask themselves is who can they trust? Fake news blamed Wall Street’s downfall of Trump, when periodically the market engages in corrections loosing 20% to 50% in value, sometimes more. Before the market rallied back today, it was down about 16% from its record high, a relatively modest sell-off when you consider how over-valued stock prices. Market corrections are hardly blamed on only one thing, like Trump’s tariffs. But even if tariffs created market uncertainty, that doesn’t mean the underlying fundamental to the economy are not in place. Certainly Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell thinks the economy continue to hum along, nowhere close to a recession, as JP Morgan’s Dimon says. With today’s whopping rally, it’s doubtful that Trump’s tariffs were the cause of the latest sell-off.
Trump announced he would take a 90-day pause on so-called reciprocal tariffs, matching tariffs other countries apply to the U.S. If Wall Street really though tariffs would tank the economy it would be rally back with the largest rally in U.S. history. “President Trump is going to fix our global trading relationships and at the same time he’s gonna work with Congress to make America the manufacturing centre of the world with the lowest taxes, the lowest regulations and the cheapest energy,” Miller said. Miller sees Trump’s tariff policy as a way to correct years of trade deficits and imbalances, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to foreign competition. Fox News, like most news networks, is subject the same propaganda as other outlets. Democrats have no answer for why they were quoting Bill Ackman for a “nuclear winter” and now watching the biggest rally in U.S. history?
When Democrats and the fake news try to pin the Wall Street sell-off on Trump, will they credit him with the biggest one day rally in U.S. history? Trump can only do wrong to the fake news, always hoping for the political fallout to lower Trump’s approval ratings. Judging by today’s rally does Wall Street really think that Trump’s tariffs move the economy closer to recession? “The effect, though, of those global tariffs will be that companies will have to move their production back into the United States,” Miller said, realizing that any major shift in manufacturing doesn’t happen overnight. “More importantly, it will restore our national security so that we will not be dependent on anyone else to survive and thrive as a nation. That the significance we’re talking about today. The most important economic even of our life time,” Miller told Fox News host McCallum.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
