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The Tariff-ied Right

Some of Donald Trump’s most loyal media allies are starting to break ranks with him as the economic turmoil deepens, an early indicator cracks are starting to form in the base.

Author

Oliver Darcy
April 07, 2025

Joe Kernen grills Peter Navarro. (Screen grab via SnapStream)

On Monday morning, CNBC’s "Squawk Box" co-anchor Joe Kernen welcomed Peter Navarro onto the program. Kernen has long been one of Donald Trump’s most visible boosters on business television, frequently praising the president’s economic agenda and telling viewers that Trump’s return to power would spark a new golden age for American business. So it would have been reasonable, perhaps, to expect a friendly segment—an unchallenging platform for Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, to spin the economic fallout of the administration’s sweeping tariffs.

But that’s not what happened.

From the jump, Kernen came out swinging, pressing Navarro on a tariff policy that has sent markets into turmoil worldwide. On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged another 350 points, extending a staggering slide of over 4,000 points since what Trump had billed “Liberation Day.” When Navarro tried to downplay the panic—calling the current moment a “beautiful situation” and dismissing market reaction as overblown—Kernen shut him down. He called the tariffs…

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Laura Ingraham on "The Ingraham Angle." (Screen grab via SnapStream)

Tall Tales About Tariffs: While some of Donald Trump's media allies are openly turning on him, his most loyal and overt propagandists are sticking to the script. That's evidenced by much of the commentary on Fox News. On Monday night, for example, Laura Ingraham kicked off her show by mocking economic alarm bells, brushing off concerns as overblown hysteria. She blasted the press for…

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