CNBC Journalists Crack Up as Tim Scott Tries to Explain Trump Tariffs

Tim Scott continues to be a laughingstock of the Republican Party with his latest comments.

Joining CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday, Scott made the entire roundtable laugh when he desperately tried to defend Donald Trump’s economic plans.

“Do you agree with all the tariffs?” Joe Kernen asked, referring to Trump’s isolationist economic agenda. “John Deere, 200 percent? Do you think companies that make stuff here should be at 15 percent tax? That’s industrial policy, isn’t it?”

“I believe that President Trump often times talks in the abstract,” the South Carolina senator responded.

CNBC hosts laughed at the ridiculous nonanswer. “What are we supposed to believe then?” asked one journalist.

“Believe his performance,” said Scott. “Believe what we saw from 2017 to 2020.” He then proceeded to stumble over words and throw out numbers about jobs Trump brought home.

“Obviously, that excludes Covid,” said the CNBC host, referring to the devastation the economy and everyday people endured while Trump was president in 2020—as well as its effects on how we compare economic numbers under the Trump and Biden administrations.

While Trump’s team continues to slam Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the economy, as the hosts pointed out, they want economists and pundits to cherry-pick the highlights of Trump’s time as president.

It’s not a surprise that Scott can’t defend Trump’s economic plan. When Scott was running for president last year, he openly criticized Trump’s tariff plan on the campaign trail. “An across-the-board 10 percent [tariff would] increase … the cost of everything,” Scott told The New York Post a year ago. “In the current inflationary environment [that] would not be helpful.”

In reality, experts are warning that Trump’s economic plans, including his new tariff policies, might be even more harmful during a second go-around.

“Despite his ‘make the foreigners pay’ rhetoric, this package of policies does more damage to the US economy than to any other in the world,” wrote independent nonprofit nonpartisan researchers at the Peterson Institute in a report from September.

During a disjointed, low-energy speech on Tuesday evening, just before the vice presidential debate, Donald Trump made time to disrespect service members injured during his presidency.

At a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Trump was asked about Iran’s recent ballistic missile attacks on Israel, following Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza.

“Do you think Israel should retaliate to these missile attacks from Iran? But also do you believe that you should have been tougher on Iran after they had launched ballistic missiles in 2020 on U.S. forces in Iraq, leaving more than 100 U.S. soldiers injured?” asked a reporter.

“So first of all, ‘injured’—what does ‘injured’ mean? You mean, because they had a headache? Because the bombs never hit the fort,” responded Trump.

“There was nobody ever tougher on Iraq,” he continued, confusing the two countries.

Following the U.S. assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Iran attacked the Al Asad Airbase in neighboring Iraq, and more than 100 U.S. soldiers were left with brain injury symptoms. Some were evacuated to Germany for medical treatment, and nearly 80 troops received Purple Hearts for injuries related to the Iranian attacks.

This isn’t the first time Trump has disparaged injured U.S. troops—and it likely won’t be the last. His disrespect was so flagrant that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz mentioned it early on in the vice presidential debate, telling the American people that “when Iranian missiles did fall near U.S. troops and they received traumatic brain injuries, Donald Trump wrote it off as ‘headaches.’”

Later on in his Tuesday speech, Trump described the attack as a “very nice thing.”

We’ll see if these comments on soldiers get as much attention as Trump’s “suckers” and “losers” remarks.

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson was the lone state lawmaker who did not approve Governor Roy Cooper’s request to declare Hurricane Helene an emergency and mobilize emergency services ahead of the deadly storm.

As Hurricane Helene approached North Carolina last week, Cooper requested approval from the nine-person Council of State to act under the North Carolina Emergency Management Act, WRAL reported Tuesday.* Within hours, all but one member had responded: Robinson.

Robinson, a Trump-endorsed alleged porn enthusiast and self-declared “Black NAZI” who is currently running for governor, has spent the week since needling Cooper over the state’s emergency response—which Robinson himself apparently helped dampen.

Robinson posted on X Sunday that “the time for politics is over. We are talking about saving people’s lives here.” Then why did he not approve Cooper’s emergency request?

Former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory told WRAL that Robinson’s lack of response to Cooper’s emergency request was “inexcusable in a time of crisis.”

“This is not a time for criticism,” McCrory said. “This is a time for working together as a team and asking how you can help. I’m sure there are people who feel stranded out there, but right now is not the time to start throwing arrows.”

Robinson responded Wednesday to WRAL’s report. “When Hurricane Helene was on its way to North Carolina, Gov. Cooper was too busy hob-knobing with rich folks in New York to care about preparing for the storm,” Robinson wrote on X.

“Now Democrats like Cooper, Josh Stein & Joe Biden want to hide behind bureaucratic resolutions that pass automatically—instead of getting out there and working to help people in dire need. I won’t stand for this,” Robinson wrote. “While they are playing politics, my team and I remain committed to doing all we can to help our neighbors in the wake of this devastating storm.”

So far, Cooper has deployed more than 700 members of North Carolina’s National Guard as part of search and rescue efforts and to deliver pallets of water and food supplies to those affected by widespread flooding and mudslides across the western half of the state, according to WRAL. President Joe Biden has approved Cooper’s request for expedited federal support.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump claimed that the federal government and Cooper were intentionally neglecting residents in Republican areas of North Carolina.

* This article originally misstated the day the WRAL report was published.

Republican Representative Mike Collins tried to support JD Vance by posting a picture of the vice presidential nominee on X Wednesday morning. It backfired.

Collins inexplicably posted a very clearly edited image of Vance’s face, slimmed down with enhanced features like a chin implant. The post immediately drew mockery, with social media commentators coming up with their own photoshopped pictures.

Other commentators pointed out how this is another example of the Republicans coming off as weird.

Collins’s post reminded some X users about the GOP culture-war stance of opposing gender-affirming care, with the post exposing conservative hypocrisy over medical procedures to change one’s appearance.

The roots of the photo seem to come from a years-old meme of “yassifying” photos to improve a person’s physical appearance, as well as the online far-right obsession over a standard of male physical appearance, specifically the “Chad” archetype that has become prevalent in right-wing memes. Was this image a nod to that far-right online base and its infamous 2016 efforts, or was it just a misguided attempt to boost JD Vance? Either way, much of the internet was left scratching their heads.

American voters had one unanimous takeaway from the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, and it veered directly into territory that the Republican ticket has spent months trying to avoid.

Google Trends data indicates that, despite the country’s divided attention on various key political issues, all 50 states were laser focused on just one topic after the 90-minute matchup between Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: abortion.

Vance, who has previously likened abortion to murder, spent some of his time outright flaunting his support for a national abortion ban for cameras, attempting to frame himself as a flexible moderate on the issue rather than a politician who in 2023 described the procedure’s near-total restriction as a “minimum national standard.” Language on Vance’s website from his 2022 Senate race also described him as “100 percent pro-life.”

“I never supported a national ban,” Vance claimed during the debate. “I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban … in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody is trying to get rid of that, or at least, I hope not, though I know the Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance.”

Vance also made an appeal to the hearts of Americans, invoking the image of a friend who he said required an abortion to escape an abusive relationship. But he failed to mention that the legislation he supported would have forced her to remain in the situation.

That discrepancy was enough to catch the attention of the country, who merged their disparate interests into a unanimous search engine query that swept the nation.

That data flies in the face of a major Republican claim: that people don’t actually care about abortion and are more interested in other issues.

The Republican ticket has attempted to soften its anti-choice position in the weeks building up to the election in an attempt to appeal to women’s rights activists and draw more voters to Donald Trump’s campaign. But the practical effects of Trump’s last administration are still obvious, not least of all instilling a hyperconservative Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, which Trump has proudly taken credit for. In 2023, the former president also claimed that he should be celebrated for every single state abortion ban.

Project 2025, the far-right, Christian nationalist blueprint for a potential second Trump administration, is also all in on banning the procedure, going so far as to propose criminalizing the mailing of abortion medications and devices.

Donald Trump and his MAGA fans have aligned on one sad talking point about Tuesday’s vice presidential debate: CBS did a bad job and broke its own fact-checking rules. 

“Margaret Brennan just ‘fact checked’ JD, incorrectly, on ‘Climate Change.’ When is she going to fact check Tampon Tim on all of his false statements?” wrote Trump on Truth Social as the debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz aired live.

Trump got especially heated after fellow moderator Norah O’Donnell asked about his efforts to steal the 2020 election. “CBS is LYING AGAIN about the 2020 Election,” complained Trump, calling the question a “statement.”

“CBS IS FAKE NEWS!” he declared. 

To be clear, though CBS said the onus was on the candidates to correct each other, the moderators made no promise to stay out of the fray completely. But that didn’t stop Republicans. Perhaps the biggest outrage came when Vance freaked out after being fact-checked live on his immigration claims, as the moderators cut his microphone and reminded him that Haitian immigrants in Ohio have legal status. Many of Trump’s biggest fans, including Elon Musk, quickly complained that CBS wasn’t playing fair.

Fox News’s Sean Hannity took to the spin room to slam the vice presidential debate moderators as “blatantly biased.”

“CBS, they should frankly be ashamed, they didn’t keep to the rules,” said Hannity Tuesday night. “So-called moderators immediately broke their promise not to serve as fact-checkers in order to help Tim Walz.”

“CBS was terrible,” said Fox News’s Jesse Watters. 

Megyn Kelly put it simply: “F you CBS—how DARE YOU.”

On Wednesday, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Newsmax she wasn’t happy with the network. “When they fact-checked Senator Vance and shut off his mic, I thought that was pretty alarming,” Leavitt whined. “The rules they agreed to were not to fact-check the candidates on the stage, but they just could not help themselves.”

“They were getting triggered by Senator Vance speaking the truth so powerfully and so eloquently.”

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Ohio Senator JD Vance refused to answer a direct question on whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called Vance’s response “a damning nonanswer.”

CNN’s Jim Acosta tried to ask the same simple question to Corey Lewandowski, a senior adviser with the Trump campaign, in an interview on Wednesday.

“Yeah Corey, why is this so difficult for the Trump campaign to answer? I mean, it’s 2024,” Acosta said. “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election, can you answer that?”

Like Vance, Lewandowski attempted to sidestep actually answering the question.

“Jim, I think it’s very simple,” Lewandowski said. “The American people have passed the 2020 election, and focused on an election which is just under five weeks away.”

“So look, we can go back and relitigate the 2020 election or we can look at what we can do to make America for the everyday Americans who are struggling under Bidenomics—”

“Yeah, but Corey,” Acosta interjected. “It’s not relitigating, it’s just a simple question. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? I mean, that’s easy.”

“Why are we talking about 2020 anymore?” Lewandowski said. “Does the American people care about the 2020 election anymore?”

Acosta pointed out that on the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly claimed that there was “widespread fraud” in 2020, and had already begun to tee up challenges to election results.

“But Jim, Jim, we know there was fraud, there’s no question there was some fraud that took place in the 2020 election,” Lewandowski said. “There’s no question about that.”

“No widespread fraud,” Acosta clarified.

“But what does widespread mean, Jim? I mean, is one vote that was illegal enough?” Lewandowski said, exasperated.

“There were instances of voter fraud from Trump supporters,” Acosta pointed out. “I mean, you know that from the 2020 campaign.”

Trump and his allies have been accused of coordinating a plot in which 84 fake electors across seven states signed false electoral certificates claiming that Trump won the presidential election in their states.

Acosta noted that experts, including officials from the Trump campaign, had affirmed that there was no widespread voter fraud, as Lewandowski continued to spiral about what “widespread” actually meant.

“So I guess what you’re saying is, is that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election,” Acosta interjected. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“What I’m saying is Joe Biden is the president of the United States. You recognize that, and I recognize that,” Lewandowski said, continuing to whine about how they ought to talk about the 2024 election instead.

“Will Donald Trump honor the results of the 2024 election?” Acosta pressed. “Will he do that?”

“Jim, did-did-did Hillary Clinton honor the results? No. Did Democrats honor the results?” Lewandowski cried.

“Yes, she did. She called and conceded the election,” Acosta replied.

As Lewandowski continued to rant, Acosta explained, “Corey I was with you guys on election night in Manhattan in 2016. She called, she called the then president elect and conceded the election.”

Completely unwilling to address any of Acosta’s “hypotheticals” or reckon with his own damning nonanswer, Lewandowski continued to rant about illegal immigration and the economy.

It’s become increasingly clear that no member of the Trump campaign is willing to answer simple questions about the previous election, or ensure a peaceful transition of power in the next one.

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump made a threat against the electoral process that was quickly overshadowed by the vice presidential debate.

The former president was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a campaign speech, after which he took questions from the press. Trump was asked whether “he trusts the process this time around,” alluding to his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and attempts to overturn it.

“I’ll let you know in about 33 days,” Trump said, about the time until November’s elections.

It’s a disturbing statement from Trump, and this close to the election, it’s a promise to follow through on the other similar election threats he’s made in the last few months. It’s worth remembering that he’s been refusing to say that he would accept unfavorable election results since his 2016 campaign for president. And his infamous rejection of the 2020 presidential election results was followed by the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, as well as fake elector plots across the country in states including Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

This time around, his supporters are already plotting to swing the election in his favor. In Georgia, his supporters are using the state election board to make changes that would help him. Across the country, many Republicans say they won’t accept the election results if he loses and even pledge to take action. Trump himself is attacking the U.S. Postal Service and laying the groundwork to delegitimize mail-in ballots, even though his handpicked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is hurting the postal system on his own.

November’s election could very well be chaotic, especially if results are very close in battleground states. Trump is desperate to return to the White House and enact vengeance on his enemies, as well as bury the legal cases against him. Will the electoral system be able to withstand MAGA’s plots?

JD Vance’s big idea to prevent school shootings is … bigger locks?

During the vice presidential debate Tuesday, Vance offered his answer to how he would address school shootings. “And I say this, not loving the answer,” Vance said.

“We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger,” Vance explained. “We’ve got to make the windows stronger, and, of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers. Because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience.”

It was a particularly weak moment for Vance, who had previously touted that he had “well-developed views on public policy” he planned to put on display during the debate.

Online, it seemed like Vance was the only one into his limp answer to gun violence.

A Gen-Z college student interviewed by MSNBC after the debate called Vance’s answer “ridiculous.”

“I mean, the issue is guns, the issue is not better locks on doors,” she said.

California Representative Adam Schiff wrote in a post on X, “Vance solution for gun violence? Stronger doors at school? Stronger windows? Really?How about an assault weapons ban and background checks. And a VP who put kids over the NRA.”

Meanwhile, Vance’s opponent, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz replied, “Sometimes it is just the guns.”

Last month, after a deadly mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia, Vance resigned himself to school shootings as a bleak “fact of life” and made a similar suggestion about school security being the solution.

“We’ve got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to,” Vance said.

At the time, Vance was criticized for his callous acceptance of mass violence and blatant reluctance to strengthen gun laws.

Donald Trump has fleshed out his Project 2025–inspired Department of Education plan, and it involves handing the reins and lofty responsibilities of public school administration over to a group of people with all the time in the world: parents.

“I figure we’ll have like one person plus a secretary,” the Republican presidential nominee told a crowd in Milwaukee Tuesday night. “You’ll have a secretary to a secretary. We’ll have one person plus a secretary, and all the person has to do is, ‘Are you teaching English? Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing, and arithmetic. And are you not teaching woke?’

“Not teaching woke is a big factor,” Trump continued. “We’ll have a very small staff. We can occupy that staff right in this room, actually I think this room is too large. And all they’re going to do is they’re going to see that the basics are taken care of. You know, we don’t want someone to get crazy and start teaching a language that we don’t want them to teach.”

Not only do parents already have enough on their plates without trying to run the public school system, it’s likely that Trump has a specific group of parents in mind to direct education policy.

The goals he lays out are startlingly akin to the policy points of the far-right “parents’ rights” group Moms for Liberty, who hosted Trump as the keynote speaker at their annual conference in September. Moms for Liberty has recently ingratiated itself significantly into national politics and was listed as a member of Project 2025’s advisory board.

In the same speech, Trump also drew attention to the amount of real estate occupied in D.C. by Department of Education buildings, plotting that the dissolution of the federal agency would allow “somebody else to move in.”

“They’re run by the state, and run by the parents, because in Washington—you know half of the buildings, such a large number, every building you pass in Washington says Department of Education,” Trump said. “You’re gonna have a lot of vacant space. Now we can have maybe somebody else move in.”

Trump’s proposal to dismantle the Department of Education wholesale is nearly identical to Project 2025, despite his campaign spending months trying to distance itself from the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto.

Project 2025 has also proposed revisiting federal approval of the abortion pill, banning pornography nationwide, placing the Justice Department under the control of the president, slashing federal funds for climate change research in an effort to sideline mitigation efforts, and increasing funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall.