War is peace, ignorance is strength, and autoworker layoffs are a “positive reaction” in the marketplace, according to former Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Conway was asked for her take on the economic impacts of Trump’s broad tariff plans, which sent markets cratering during a stop by Fox News on Thursday.
“We were seeing some positive reaction today,” she told host Martha MacCallum. “For all the negative Debbie Downers, look at the positive reaction. Stellantis, which owns Chrysler and Ram and Jeep, they came out today and said that they are going to stop producing in Mexico.”
Stellantis announced just hours earlier that it would be cutting 900 jobs at five U.S. plants because of the tariffs, per Reuters, and temporarily pausing just some production in Mexico and Canada.
Conway isn’t alone in trying to explain away the impacts of Trump’s tariffs on the conservative news network. Fox News host Harris Faulkner’s doublespeak on the subject drew comparisons to North Korean state media. Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro urged viewers to ignore the economic pain they were feeling on Thursday for the sake of patriotic dedication to the president.
“I don’t really care about my 401k today. You know why?… I believe in this man,” Pirro said. “Who’s complaining? Wall Street. Too bad, he’s helping the middle class. I think it’s gonna be over this summer.”
Viewers flagged Fox News’s termination of a live stock ticker altogether midday on Thursday, shortly before Trump said his tariff plan was “going very well.”
But not all in the typically sycophantic MAGA world are ready to join team tariff. Texas Senator Ted Cruz told Fox Business on Thursday that long-term high tariffs weren’t good economic policy.
“I am not a fan of tariffs…If the result is our trading partners jack up their tariffs and we have high tariffs everywhere, I think that is a bad outcome for our consumers,” Cruz said. “Tariffs are a tax on consumers, and I’m not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers.”
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