Transcript: Fox News Host Wrecks Trump Tariffs as Brutal New Poll Hits

Gertz: You can almost hear the desperation starting to creep into her voice there. Maria Bartiromo is a pretty hardcore Trumper. She used to have a much stronger reputation as a business reporter, but alongside Trump’s rise, she really got on board with the movement and with him. She’s really his favorite host to interview him about the economy; he did an interview with her earlier this month. You can almost sense that she’s tried to reach through the television and warn Trump that what he’s doing could backfire in a very big way, and that he should perhaps reconsider what he’s trying to do to the economy before that happens.

Sargent: Matt, when she interviewed him earlier this month as you mentioned, she literally said it straight to his face. She practically begged Trump to show some clarity on the tariffs. And Trump basically said, Nope, the tariffs are going to go up. Bartiromo served this opportunity to make it clear that at some point the craziness is going to stop, and he was like, Nah, I’m not going to do that.

Gertz: And then she asked him, Are you expecting a recession this year? and he said, Well, there’s a period of transition happening. I think there was a sense from the business community during the campaign that Trump was talking big about these tariffs, but they weren’t really going to happen. [They thought that] it was all part of some negotiation, and they’d be able to talk him out of it, so a lot of people from that community got on board with Trump’s campaign. They decided they preferred an insurrectionist to someone who might raise their taxes. Now it seems to be blowing up in their faces. And for someone like Bartiromo, who, as I recall, was telling her audience that this probably wouldn’t be a big deal, that is a big problem. And I think we’re seeing that manifest in little explosions like that.