‘Like a baby’: Schumer BLASTS Trump’s tantrum over tariff defeat

Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content to all of MSNOW's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace, Why Is This Happening, Main Justice, and more. Plus, new episodes of all your favorite MSNOW shows ad-free, and ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Good evening from New York City. I am Stephanie Ruhle here with a very special edition of All In, because on this day, this is the day when the Supreme Court joined the No Kings movement. Donald Trump claimed the power to impose massive tariffs on any country any time he wanted, to raise taxes on American consumers and businesses all by himself. It was his signature domestic policy. Multiple states and major companies sued him over it. And today, the Supreme Court said one word, no, Donald Trump, you cannot do that. Ruling 6-3 that the tariffs are unconstitutional, saying you need approval from Congress. Trump responded by raging at the justices specifically who ruled against him in a press conference. Watch this. I'm ashamed of certain members of the court absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what's right for our country. The Democrats on the court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote no. They're an automatic no no matter how good a case you have. It's a no. You can't knock their loyalty. It's one thing you can do with some of our people. They're just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats, and not that this should have anything at all to do with it. They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. All of this is happening because Donald Trump thinks he ought to have unlimited power. As he said on stage earlier today, he thinks part of being president is being able to extract money from anybody, anytime. To show you how ridiculous the opinion is, however, the court said that I'm not allowed to charge even one dollar. I can't charge one dollar. Can't charge a dollar. But I am allowed to cut off any and all trade or business with that same country. In other words, I can destroy the trade. I can destroy the country. I'm even allowed to impose a foreign country destroying embargo. I can embargo. I can do anything I want, but I can't charge one dollar. Now the president is claiming he will impose a new 10 percent tariff on the whole entire world. This under a new legal pretext, which is leaving American businesses and investors unsure of what to prepare for next. Nobody actually knows what is going to happen now to the billions and billions in tariffs that the U.S. took in last year. about the only thing anyone is sure of is that the president lost and he is raving mad. All right, let's get down to business. Joining me now is the Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer. This is quite a day. I'm honored you could join me. First, put the president aside. Your reaction. Very hard to do. Your reaction to today's Supreme Court ruling. First, the Supreme Court did what everyone knew was the right thing. This when Trump did the use this so-called emergency doctrine, which never mentioned tariffs at all. Everyone knew that if the court was ruling correctly, they would throw it out. But it's it's thrown American to chaos. All of the promises that Trump made is going to bring back manufacturing jobs. They're lower. It's going to lower prices. Prices are higher. It's going to create a new way of bringing, you know, a trade deficit. Deficit's worse. Everything, it's been a disaster for the American people. And Stephanie, here's the amazing thing. The number one thing people in America care about is rising costs. Tariffs have caused them. Trump didn't mention costs in his whole speech. He just rambled. He just went on and on. He sort of like was. Oh, you mean his response today? Yes. Yes. So let's talk about his response. He doesn't even mention it. It was, he was like a 10-year-old, name-calling, foot-stomping, berating Supreme Court justices. He's like a baby. But what do you make of the president bashing individual Supreme Court justices? Those same justices he'll be standing right across from at the State of the Union in a few days. I think it's outrageous. Instead of reacting, what he should have done since the tariffs have been such a disaster. What he should have done is said, hey, OK, the Supreme Court ruled. I'm getting rid of them. But he can't. And so he's coming back with another plan to impose the same tariffs that are going to keep costs up, lose our more manufacturing jobs, increase inflation, increase the trade deficit. All these bad things he's going to try again. But I got news for you, Mr. President, and this may be good for the American people. Your new way of doing it is going to be very difficult. You have to do all kinds of findings and hearings and everything else for the 301 tariffs. He imposed these other tariffs illegally, as it turns out, across the board. But it ain't going to be very easy. And he doesn't even think about it. One other thing. Businesses, small business, medium business. You know what they hate? Large businesses. They hate uncertainty. They hate chaos. Guess what? That's what he's done. Yeah, today this is only going to bring us more chaos. But what happens if they don't return the money? Right. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson already said, I'm not so sure the American people or businesses are going to be getting this money back. See, in court, they'll be back in court. If the tariffs are illegal, then the money must be returned. And Trump keeps trying to ignore the law, break the law, flaunt the law. But for in many, many cases, including this one, the courts, the courts have held him responsible. And in about two thirds of the cases that we've gone to sue Trump on, not just the Senate, but, you know, people who care about him breaking the law, he's lost, including to a lot of when a lot of Trump judges ruled, including today, where two Trump judges ruled against him. Actually, let me ask you about that, because in Neil Gorsuch's opinion, he warned about the problems with sidelining Congress and placing too much power in the hands of the executive branch. And he wrote, that is no recipe for a republic. Correct. This is a Supreme Court justice Trump nominated. What do you make of this? I make of it that every so often, even these justices who Trump nominated, even these judges who were way to the right, the law is so clear it's hard for them to avoid it. The amazing thing is how the other three didn't. But it's Congress that's always had the power on tariffs. And right now, I would urge my Republican colleagues, some of them don't like the tariffs. We have some bipartisan legislation. Most of them don't like the tariffs. Well, but some of them are brave enough to vote against Trump's tariffs. And we have some bipartisan legislation. And I hope that this court decision will bring enough Republicans on board that we can say once and for all, tariffs belong with the Congress, not with the White House. OK, but what does hope mean? Right. Mitch McConnell put out a very aggressive statement against the president in favor of the Supreme Court's position. Does this mean you're going to get on the phone this weekend and start calling a Republican? We are. Yes, we are right now talking about how we can join with Republicans to reassert Congress's power. We tried to do it previously. They didn't join us. They were afraid of Trump. They have they must join us now. Let me tell you something. If they're going to do what's right for the American people, they'll join us. There's so much heat on these tariffs everywhere you go. Everywhere I went in New York State, whether it's in New York City, the suburbs, or in rural Republican upstate New York, people complained about these tariffs. Small businesses were going under because of these tariffs. People were paying through the nose because of these tariffs. Our tourist season in Canada, you know, so many Canadians come down to the Finger Lakes, was kaput. The tariffs have been a disaster. There's not a lot of TV interviews that include the word kaput. I'm so glad Chuck Schumer is here. What about the people of New York? Because J.B. Pritzker, governor of Illinois, sent an invoice to the White House today saying, we would like to see a check for $1,700, a tariff refund check for every person in the state of Illinois. Should the people of New York State be getting something similar? Absolutely. And why not? I mean, the bottom line is these were illegal. They were always illegal. It hurt people badly. It's hurting Trump himself in the eyes of the American people. He ought to, you know, once he ought to admit he made a mistake, he ought to admit he's harming the American people, and he ought to, he should have taken advantage of this decision to say, bye-bye tariffs. I can't do them anymore. The court says they're no. But he can't do that. He never admits he's made a mistake. But again, I just want to go back to the point I made before. not to mention that it's raised the costs of people is just incredible because it's been one of the main reasons that costs have gone up it's one of the main reasons americans are so unhappy with the economy and their economic plight and he's in this bubble he doesn't even understand that do you know why because he loves the tariffs i believe so much because they are the thing until now that lets him at least live like a king. Business leaders come into the White House, go to see Commerce Secretary Lutnick every day, offering the president gifts and offerings, all because they're trying to get exemptions, right? You've got all of these lobbyists hanging around the hoop, getting paid by businesses just to get a meeting with Lutnick. So the president loves the tariffs. Is there anything you and your colleagues can do going forward or a bill you want to introduce to stop the grift that we're seeing day in and day out around these tariffs is just one example. There are so many examples of corruption. So what are you going to do over and over and over again? First, there are all kinds of court suits that we have worked with. I've been plaintiff in a few of them with so many of these great lawyers and we win most of the cases. And second the bottom line is that we should withhold Trump ability legislatively to do these tariffs Again the Republicans have an obligation to do that They should join us now. Now's their opportunity because they know when you talk to them privately, they know how bad the tariffs are for the American people. Well, today is a win, at least for the Constitution. It's a win for small business, for the American consumer. The president's speaking at the State of the Union on Tuesday. A number of Democrats have already said they're not going to attend. What is your position on this? As of now, because I respect the whole institution, but I don't respect Donald Trump one bit, I will go. But the bottom line is there are a lot of my colleagues who aren't going to go. What do you think about that? I think that's fine with me. Everyone should make his own choice. As a Democratic leader, I am going to go as of now. But who knows what will happen in the next few days? My last question. Obviously, this today is not good news for the president. The Epstein files are not good news for the president. We just got GDP numbers that are not good news for the president. And obviously, the ICE deportation situation, not good news for the president. Are you worried that in the next few days, the president will launch some sort of major distraction that can be his lead for State of the Union? Because what I just listed are not good headlines for him. The bottom line is he often does that. I'm really worried because sometimes he gets so unhinged almost when he's in trouble like this. I'm worried what he might do in Iran. Who knows? All right. Senator Chuck Schumer, thank you so much. Thank you. Coming up, my partner Ali Vilshi on today's big tariff news. And one of the small businesses who beat Donald Trump in the Supreme Court will join us. That's next. If you believe the president, the U.S. has taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from his tariffs. But a report from the New York Fed found that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers. That's you and me. So when will shoppers and businesses actually get their money back? Here's what Donald Trump had to say about that earlier. I said, well, what happens to all the money that we took in? It wasn't discussed. Wouldn't you think they would have put one sentence in there saying that keep the money or don't keep the money, right? What you're saying is, are you saying that you don't plan to honor refunds for companies that file for them? I just told you the answer, right? I told you the answer. It's not discussed. We'll end up being in court for the next five years. I am joined now by my friend and my partner, my colleague, MSNOW host, Ali Velshi. And David Levi joins us. You don't know him, but you should. A small business toy maker. He was among the plaintiffs who successfully challenged and defeated Trump's tariffs today. So if you're wondering where are all the business leaders speaking out against Trump's actions, look no further than our friend David Levi. David, I'm going to get to you in a second. But Ali, give us your immediate takeaway from today's decision. Well, strangely, smiling. Well, first of all, because David's story is fantastic. And he explains the whole thing. I think it's amazing. I'm glad we're talking to him. But Donald Trump, the only thing he said that wasn't nonsensical as an entire press conference was that, that the Supreme Court didn't say what happens to the tariff money. They didn't. It's going to this is going to be the product of more litigation. There are lots of lawsuits by companies saying, give us our money back. Donald Trump is implied, by the way, that the money is not all there to give back, which is just weird. He's also implied, you and I have talked about this, that he's used numbers that are much bigger than the numbers that are calculated. Well, now that he may have to pay it back, which numbers is he going to say? Did he take in as much money as he said he took in from tariffs? Because then he'd have to pay it back. Here's the bottom line. It's very easy to account for. They know what you can measure what the tariffs are. At some point, it's going to have to go back. The question is, does it go back to the big companies? Does it go back? If I bought a car last August, if I paid extra money for it, do I get to go to the dealer? But that's very easy to go back to businesses. You know, it's not that easy to find what happens after what happens to all of us. David, tell us your story, right? Yes. Well, I'm here in my lab in Charlottesville, Virginia. Yeah, I I'm a small business, just a couple other people working with me. I have my lab here where I design products. downstairs is our workshop. And yeah, I make little electronic theremin kits, little synthesizers with different sensors built in. And the idea is mixed music with creativity and learning about electronics. But you decided to join this lawsuit. What has this ride been like? And did you think we would end up with this decision? I mean, it was what it was like, April, May, so 10 months ago, when the rates kept going higher and higher to the point where I couldn't get parts anymore. And that was a very scary time. It gave me so much hope to read this article that said, hey, remember from high school where Congress is in charge of collecting money? And I read and I thought, oh, yeah, that does make sense. So I was lucky enough to join this case, which ended up being the case that went to the Supreme Court. And now I have so much relief. And now we have a lot more clarity on tariffs. So, David, you're exactly what Donald Trump claims he wants America to be. You are, in fact, a maker, right? You make things and then you make these toys and these games for kids to become makers themselves so that we don't become a society that just pushes paper around or is just a knowledge economy. This is part of the knowledge economy. Explain how this works. You buy parts from China and then you assemble them into these these toys. Yeah, so I do what I can in-house. I have this cool machine that bends wires in just the perfect way so that you can place the wires on the breadboard and make it very easy to put it together for the first time. like we get circuit boards from overseas but then we do the quality control and we screw everything together and put in the speaker and put it all together in-house which means we get to do creative things and i get to be close to the product which helps me design better products in the future and yeah it's ironic because uh i had to pay these tariffs and when they were at 100 150 on some of my parts it just didn't make sense to run my factory at the same speed I had to, you know, cut my workers hours like 40%, just run everything a lot slower, go into survival mode. But what's ironic is if I was just a company that just said, oh, China, do all the production for me. And I'll buy the P, I'll buy it and sell it. When the rates are really high, I could just keep making it over in China, maybe ship it somewhere other than the US. But I'd have that flexibility versus... That's the problem. I need the part. That's you. And do you articulate the entire problem with this mess that it would be easier for David in the last year to just have said, make it yourself in China. I'll just sell them here. So the opposite of what Donald Trump's trying to opposite of what we want to do. OK, so, David, you said you're breathing a huge sigh of relief today. But doesn't it sound like you are going to have to fight for this refund over the next five years, like the president said? oh yeah so that's one of the things i mean presumably the money that i paid should come back to me at some point uh one thing that makes that more complicated is some of my suppliers said oh we'll do all the shipping for you and all the logistic stuff which got very complicated with tariffs so of course i paid the tariffs but i paid it to my supplier and that supplier might have been the person who officially paid the tariffs. So when the tariff money gets paid back, it might actually get paid back to China, which is so ironic. Instead of China paying the tariffs, we're paying the tariffs to China. And so that's one point. And the other point is for every dollar that I've spent that I've had to pay the government in tariff taxes, I've had another dollar of value kind of just disappear, just be destroyed, not paid to the government, but just lost because I had to slow down production. I just wasn't able to make as many products as I wanted to. In fact, there was one point where you ground to a halt, right? Because you just couldn't get your stuff. Yeah, I just couldn't get parts for two months. So it's like we got to slow everything way down, cut my workers hours. And yeah, and then it went down to 50%. And at that point, it's like, okay, we can keep going kind of in survival mode. But that led to like, I made 25% less products than I did the year previously. So that's like 3000 science kits, synthesizers to teach you about sensors, 3000 of those that weren't, you know, given to a hobbyist or a kid and Christmas break. So again, yeah, they, instead of learning about electronics and music at the same time, they presumably spent like more time on their iPad winter break. Just before we go, David, what happens to your business? What will your business look like this year? If the president's new 10% tariffs, these 10% global tariffs that he announced today, if they hit, what will your business look like? Well, like the main point with the IEPA tariffs was, oh, now we can raise tariffs to any degree at any time. Now we know that that can't happen. So there are other tariff abilities. You know, Congress said, hey, in this case, the executive branch can do tariffs this way, this way, this way. That's way better than waking up one day and then the tariff rates have gone up 50%. Like now there's an investigation. Different people give their feedback. You know, these 10% tariffs, I think they can only last for a certain amount of time. So, yeah, that's way better than not knowing what the tariff rate is going to be a year from now. It's like, do I even design a product or move my production? Oh, it's such a mess. I hope they call him to Congress to testify because that's what America needs to hear, right? This is not Best Buy. This is not General Motors. This is exactly what you want. A regular guy running a business, selling things to kids and hobbyists so that they can be makers. David, what's the name of your business? Micro Kits. Well, you got a customer or a new one in Alleyville. I'm all about it. All right. I'm not letting you leave just yet. David, thank you so, so very much. We're going to have much more with our panel of economists. That's next. It's a big night here on All In. The U military deployed on the streets of America Whole communities targeted for removal There was tremendous anxiety as they saw neighbors and friends being taken. And when accountability finally came knocking, the burn order to cover it all up. I never believed that America would be doing this. A stain on this country, one that we said we would never repeat. Rachel Maddow presents Burn Order. All episodes available now. The chief economist for J.P. Morgan told clients that today's tariff ruling could give the administration a face-saving way to climb down on their average effective tariff in a way that could lower prices eventually facing U.S. consumers. Yeah, I thought that too, but a climb down was the last thing on our president's mind today. Effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs, they're existing, they're there, remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect. Today, I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged. Back with me now, our very own Ali Valshi. And joining us, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a leadership scholar at Yale University School of Management. He has got a new book coming out specifically on the Ten Commandments of Donald Trump. So we need his help dissecting what we heard today. And Bharat Ramamurti joins us. He served as deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Biden. I start with Ali. I actually thought that this Supreme Court ruling would have been Donald Trump's graceful exit. I believe that for months when Scott Besson was saying his prayers at night, he was actually praying for this outcome despite what he said on TV. Because Trump would get to say, I was fighting for you. I was trying to bring manufacturing back. But the courts, they stopped me. And he would get to save face and say that. Yeah. While prices went down, things normalized. CEOs behind the scenes said, thank you, sir. I'm thrilled this happened and the markets would rise. Yes. Alas, you would do the opposite. The Supreme Court decision was actually status quo, right? It would have been very unusual if they've done it the other way, because as much as we'd like to think the guardrails are up and the Supreme Court's working the way it should be, this was a pretty obvious ruling. So they make this ruling. Donald Trump has an exit ramp. He takes the exit ramp off the speeding highway and then he runs back onto the speeding ramp in the other direction. Like this is wild that he went back and I'm going to do this again. I'm going to do it a different way. I'm going to find all the ways to do this. He just didn't register that you are the president of the United States. And for the moment, your party controls both houses of Congress. You can convince them, if you feel like it, to impose tariffs. But that's how it has to be. This is the actual Constitution. And he's just decided to snub the Constitution again. Don't think he'll get away with it, but he's trying. Jeffrey, the Supreme Court gave him an off-ramp and he ran back on the freeway. Stephanie, Ali, I don't think there are more than five times in my life I've ever disagreed with the two of you. You are the best people in modern TV journalism and business journalism. And yet in this case, you guys are both thinking rationally and not thinking like Donald Trump. As you mentioned in this book, you know, we suggest to counter Trump, you have to think like Trump. If there's something he hates worse than losing money, it's losing face. And he feels like he's being humiliated. So there are things that he does that are predictable as a result of being laughed at. But we had heard that, you know, 75 percent of the CEOs that we've had at our CEO summits have said that these tariffs were going to be seen as unconstitutional. Fully two-thirds of them said these tariffs are bad, despite what Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, have said, and Scott Besson, the Secretary of Treasury, and Peter Navarro, trade negotiator, were advising. They say these tariffs are bad for the nation. They've said that 66% of them said they're never going to invest more in manufacturing as a result of these tariffs. So they saw this coming, and 80% of the CEOs say these tariffs, the revenues from these tariffs, were being paid for by Americans, largely consumers. So his response is to continue the uncertainty, Stephanie, rather than to take the exit ramp that you suggest, which actually be good for him and good for the country. He's so defensive that he's going to come up with denial and diversionary. You already mentioned Iran, as we know, that was the whole idea behind Ukraine, Greenland and his racial taunts. As much as they seem like emotional outbursts, There's strategic choices he makes to divert attention. I think I'm very worried about that, that Iran, which doesn't have to unfold the way it's unfolding. And they very well could ahead of the state. And Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey are trying to put a bill in place to say you can't just make a war without consulting Congress. I worry about the wag the dog scenario here. Entirely fair. Bharat, give us your take, because the president, as we said, doubled down. He added tariffs. I mean, what does that do to the macroeconomic picture? I want to get your full take on everything that unfolded. In addition to what Jeff said about Trump not liking to lose face, the other thing is that he just loves tariffs. I mean, he's been all over the place on any number of policy issues throughout his political career. But one thing that has been consistent is that he loves tariffs and he's going to find a way to try to impose tariffs. He thinks that it's a way of saving Americans money. He thinks it's a way of reviving American manufacturing. Those are incorrect, but those are his beliefs. And so I think we're not talking about chump change here is the thing that I really want to emphasize. $175 billion were collected under these illegal IEPA tariffs that were struck down today. That's about $1,700 per household in the United States. And people watching may be saying, well, where's my refund coming? And as we talked about in earlier segments, the Supreme Court didn't create a process for people to claim these refunds. So I think we're going to be stuck in litigation for many, many months or maybe years trying to figure out how companies can get this money back. At the same time, Trump is moving forward on these new tariffs, the 15 percent across the board that you talked about. And he has other tools that can impose even higher tariffs if you do an investigation that justifies them. So we're much closer to the beginning than we are to the end of this. And I think that the companies that have been facing these tariffs, even if they get their refund, I suspect that they may have to use their refund as a credit against the new tariff that they're going to pay under this new regime. Jeff, I'm sure it's too soon for you to have already done a survey of the CEOs in your network, but I am sure your phone lit up today. And one thing that business leaders need is predictability, is regularity. So to get the Supreme Court ruling that so many of them wanted to hear, but then immediately hear, but I'm about to impose a global 10 percent tariff. What does that do to them for business planning? Now, you're exactly right. They expected the court was going to toss these out and they thought that was going to be good for business and frankly, good for the Trump administration as that exit ramp. The Greeks would call us deus ex machinos when your hero gets trapped in a corner and golden chariots come in and save the hero. They thought that's what this would be for Trump. But no, they were wrong, as sadly you were expecting the best, is that by continuing this struggle as he is, not to mentioning disparaging the Supreme Court justices, calling them unpatriotic and all the other crazy things he said about them, is this only worries the business community more about the instability. This is what most troubles them. So they're quite concerned about this. And frankly, even Justice Kavanaugh's excuse, many of them have already complained to me. Are you kidding? His excuse, as you saw, was, well, it's going to be too complicated to pay that $175 billion back to all the people that shouldn't have paid this tax. Well, Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court are the reason these taxes were collected. The initial court case, federal court case filed against them was April 3rd. They're the ones who delayed it 10 months. Meanwhile, they've had 25 other weekend pocket docket decisions where they decided on whether or not somebody who is a trans person could be restricted from service. and all these other crazy decisions they thought were national priorities instead of addressing this for 10 months. This real national priority. Barth makes a really interesting point. Donald Trump really likes tariffs. And it's kind of like if you call somebody to your house to repair or something and they show up and they open their toolbox and it's just got hammers in it. And they say, I really like hammers. Hammers are very useful. Tariffs are very useful when employed properly. But you need a screwdriver, you need a wrench, you need a level, you need a whole lot of other stuff. But Ali Belshi, that is not why he likes tariffs. Barat, doesn't he like tariffs? not because of what they do to our economy or manufacturing, because they make him a king. When the president is launching a trade war, world leaders are coming bearing gifts. They're offering direct investments into this country. Business leaders are paying lobbyists huge fees just to get meetings with the president or Howard Luddick. And when they get those meetings, the president gets to say, well, what are you going to do for me? Isn't that why he likes tariffs? Yeah, I think you're completely right. He likes the leverage that the tariff— I didn't hear you. You have to read the part where you compliment Stephanie. Completely right. Yes, Stephanie's good. And I think that he loves the leverage that it gives him. As you said, it means that world leaders are lining up to call him and say, oh, Donald Trump, you're great. Can you please give us a break on this? And we'll try to do something nice for you, not necessarily for the country, but for you personally. And you have business leaders, the CEOs of the biggest companies in the United States It's coming to Trump and and showering him with gifts and trying to curry personal favor. My problem with all of this, in addition to the corruption that that breeds, is guys like Dave, who you just had on. You know, he doesn't have a direct line to Donald Trump and he doesn't have a way of getting exemptions for the parts that he's trying to bring in and the products that he's trying to make. So it's just another way, an addiction to the tax cuts and all the other things that Trump does, that he is slanting this economy towards the rich and the well-connected and away from everybody else. Yeah, Dave's only thing he can do is come on our TV show. I'm pretty sure Donald Trump doesn't want a box of gizmos that Dave put together. Jeff, last word to you. The last word is what Ali is referring to. It has a long history in philosophy. Abraham Kaplan, a philosopher, referred to it as the law of instrument. You give a child a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You're exactly right. I'm glad you mentioned the book. Thank you. There's a Fortune magazine article we just put out while the show is on that anybody can look up on the exact topics we're talking about. But more than any of those things if I was going to sell you something that I had written If you go back to a Wall Street Journal piece that Steffi and Ali I know you both read It came out in 2004 It was the first published writing anywhere that predicted Trump would run for president I did a series in the Wall Street Journal on the horrific lessons that NBC thought we would be learning from The Apprentice. The first one was called Last Emperor Trump, and it predicted this abusive use of power that is so giddying the vanity behind it all. That's what's really troubling here. And you're exactly right, brought, I have to agree with you, and not just because you have a Yale JD, because I agree with your exact, that he loves to fix on the idea of the power it gives him, this imperial sense. 2004, Ali may have read it, but I'm sorry, Jeff. I was in high school. You were in school, yeah. I enjoyed the article a great deal. Ali Velshi, Barat Wilmer-Worthy, and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. Thank you for joining us tonight. I'm going to let you leave. You have to get ready. I got another show. You got a show to end. And then you got a show. I do. This is the plight of Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle at MSNOW. Still to come, how Republicans, how they're responding to the possibility of the biggest political defeat of Trump's second term. I'm guessing they're going to say, I didn't hear about it. I haven't watched the news today. They like that line. We'll be right back. As President Trump continues implementing his ambitious agenda, follow along with the MSNOW newsletter, Project 47. You'll get weekly updates sent straight to your inbox with expert analysis on the administration's latest actions and how they're affecting the American people. The American people are basically telling the president that they are not okay with any of this. Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at ms.now slash project 47. I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed. They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. They write this terrible defective decision, totally defective. It's almost like not written by smart people. Justices Fortsett and Barrett, are you surprised in particular by their decision today? And do you regret nominating them? I don't want to say whether or not I regret. I think their decision was terrible. Yeah. I think it's an embarrassment to their families. Tim Miller is a former RNC spokesperson, now writer at large for The Bulwark, and of course, their superstar podcaster. Jason Johnson is a professor of politics and journalism at Morgan State University and an MS now political contributor. They joined the conversation. Tim, to you first. Is this good politics for Donald Trump? Well, he's been throwing temper tantrums for 10 years. He got elected president twice, so I don't know. I guess it's OK. Politics for him. It's better than I wish it would be. it is pretty alarming. One of the clips you didn't play there, he was talking about Gorsuch and Barrett was that he is concerned that there might be foreign influence at play. President of the United States basically alleging the Supreme Court of being corrupt, being in the pocket of some foreign country, some foreign agent. I know that we're not supposed to take Trump literally, I guess, even though he's the president, but that's an insane allegation to make by the president of the United States, by two people that he nominated to the Supreme Court. And, you know, I think it reflects somebody that is unhappy and panicking that has basically only real economic policy lever got totally neutered today by the Supreme Court. What are your thoughts, Jason? Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This was an easy opportunity for Donald Trump to basically, you said this earlier, Stephanie, he could have said, hey, I was fighting for America and these terrible court people did it and these stiffs and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to do other things. But no, he has decided that after the Supreme Court got rid of these tariffs that no one is happy with, not the business community, not the consumers, not the voters, not Republican members of Congress behind scenes. He's like, now let's go step on another rake and we're going to do 10 percent tariffs around the world. Here's the issue. That'll help you, I guess, in places like Mexico where the tariffs were like 17 percent. So now it drops to 10 and, you know, China or something else like that. But at the end of the day, it's not going to address the greatest Achilles heel of the Republican Party heading into the midterms, which is issues of affordability. Because even if you get rid of the if some of the taxes or some of the tariffs are deemed to be unconstitutional, you put in new ones. Businesses aren't going to lower prices. And that's what's got people angry. And this kind of instability is not the kind of thing that could be addressed before Labor Day, which is when people's decisions on how they're going to vote this fall are already set in. So we're talking Labor Day in the midterms. If you are a Democrat, Tim, how should you capitalize on this? well look i mean i think that i liked what jb pritzker did today in illinois which was basically sent a letter to donald trump saying you owe everybody in my state 1700 bucks i think that's a very simple way to explain it uh you know the average american paid somewhere between a thousand and two thousand dollars additionally in tariff taxes that they wouldn't have paid if trump hadn't put the tariffs on there um you know if those tariffs get paid back they're going to go get paid back to corporations and, you know, CEOs are just going to be dumped into the kitty in these big corporations. And I agree with Jason, you know, prices aren't going to come down. People aren't going to see that money come back meaningfully and prices might not go up as much as they would have. So I think if you're a Democrat, like the message is simply, he cost you 1700 bucks with his stupid illegal tariffs. He owes you. He's not going to do that because all he cares about is, his rich buddies in the Epstein class, to borrow a phrase from Ossoff and Roe. I think that'd be a pretty good way to talk about it. And let's be clear, if prices were to go down, that would be deflationary and it would be bad all around. However, the other thing that we're dealing with is wages aren't going up. And when businesses are paralyzed, and that's exactly what they are, when the president is making tariffs higher, lower, higher, lower, when businesses don't know what's coming tomorrow, they don't give raises. They don't expand their businesses. They don't hire anyone. They're trapped. And that's exactly the position the president has put those businesses in again today, threatening the 10 percent tariff around the world. Jason, I'd like you to weigh in on J.B. Pritzker's move to say, yes, please pay everyone in the state of Illinois $1,700. And beyond him, what should Democrats do? First off, I thought that was a brilliant move by Pritzker because that's tangible money that people can understand, right? Like you had people in 2024 saying, hey, I remember Donald Trump gave me a stimulus check. It doesn't matter the amount of money, but it has to be the amount of money that somebody working at Walmart, working at Target, driving a bus can comprehend and say $1,700 makes a difference for me, even if they're never going to get the money back. So I thought that was a good move. The Democrats in general, the greatest thing that they need to make sure of is that they just allow Republicans to continue to be a circular firing squad. Like this is this is stupid on the part of the Republican Party. And it's not something that they're going to be able to avoid because you have a president who's going to double down on the issue. I would say this, though, Stephanie, I always say this. The Republicans, as stupid as they may be, the Democrats can't act like they now can just slide into the rest of the year. They have to keep pushing affordability. They have to keep fighting on prices. They have to keep fighting about price gouging. And they have to remember that even though this volatility is something that's hurting people. Folks without jobs right now, because the terrorists did not increase hiring under these circumstances, they still want relief and health care and other issues. And you can't forget about those just because Donald Trump makes another mistake. Then what does this ruling mean, Tim, for Republicans who are up for reelection in November? Because the truth got through. It doesn't matter how many times Donald Trump or Scott Fessent told the American people it's foreign countries, it's foreign companies that are paying the tariffs. The majority of the American people now know better. What is this going to do to Republicans come November? Yeah, look, I mean, the only silver lining for them is that who the heck knows what Donald Trump is going to do with his erratic tariffs between now and November. So at some level, it's like a little bit of a relief, probably marginally, at least on the economic impact of the Trump policies. The problem with that, though, is that they can't say that, right? Like they're still, you know, they're still riding or dying with Trump. And so, you know, we will see Trump put in the 10% across the board tariff today. It's in for 150 days. That takes us basically up into election time. Who the heck knows what else he's going to try to do? You know, Bernie Moreno in Ohio said basically they should vote on it. So, you know, these Republicans might end up finding themselves in a tough position. And maybe some of them, you know, this gives them an opportunity to get a little bit of distance on that. But, you know, it's hard to think about any Republicans that have had been very deft at getting different distance from Donald Trump in the past few years. Distance or not, he may put even more pressure on Republicans in Congress to actually vote to implement tariffs. Last question. I've got 60 seconds left. Tim just said, who knows what Donald Trump will do next? What will he do four days from now at the State of the Union? What are you expecting, Jason? in 30 seconds. I expect him to rant and rave about all the amazing things that he's done that nobody in America is actually experiencing. I expect that he will attack President Obama. I suspect that he will talk about the 2020 election. It'll essentially be a repeat of everything Donald Trump does, which would work if people weren't paying so much and taxes were not hurting people the way they are and the economy was better. So, Stephanie, I don't expect anything really impressive. Donald Trump has really lost his ability to charm and engage the public the way he used to. And I suspect he's going to be singing the same old song in the State of the Union and everyone's going to pretend that they're okay with it and they're going to leave the theater. Well, we will be watching Tim Miller, Jason Johnson. Thank you for joining me tonight. Coming up next, in the next hour, actually, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker will be joining my friend and colleague Jen Psaki. You do not want to miss it. He's going to be talking about the $1,700 checks they put a request in for. We'll be right back. That is all for All In for the week, but you will see me right back here at 11 p.m. Eastern. including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.