During her opening monologue on Wednesday’s broadcast of FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham praised President Donald Trump’s trade policy regarding his use of presidential tariff power.
Ingraham said Trump’s “pause” early in the day showed the political class had underestimated the commander-in-chief.
Transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: Now, yes, I know we had a massive market rebound after Trump’s 3D chess move, tariffs. But for those who just want to get clean, the executive order we’ve all been waiting for.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Biden administration launched what you’ve called a war on showers. They had certain regulations that basically killed the water pressure of showers.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There’s no water. You don’t get water. It’s ridiculous. In my case, I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair.
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INGRAHAM: OK. Trump and his team were on a roll today. They were having a good time, working on the agenda items, big and small, that he campaigned on. So with all the good news, the naysayers, they were left sputtering.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If it was a plan, if it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation?
JAMIESON GREER, U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE: It’s not market manipulation, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, then what is it? Because it sure is not a strategy.
GREER: We’re trying to reset the global trade system.
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INGRAHAM: Oh, my goodness, they’re grasping at straws. And that brings us to thinking three steps ahead. That’s the focus of tonight’s Angle.
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TRUMP: Our country is stronger than it’s ever been, and somebody had to do that with — we had to take the medicine. We had to go through the operation and that’s what we’ve been through. And a lot of presidents would not have done it. No president would have done it, I think, but it had to be done.
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INGRAHAM: Well, his critics always misunderstood him. They said Trump’s position is crazy. Tariffs are never going to work. He’s trying to tank the economy. He’s way over his skis.
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SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Donald Trump poured gasoline on our global economy and lit a match with his devastating trade war.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the first just single manmade recession in American history.
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK ANCHOR: Do you personally expect a recession?
JAMIE DIMON, CEO, JPMORGAN CHASE: I think probably that’s a likely outcome.
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INGRAHAM: And as usual, the political class also underestimated Trump. Remember, they scoffed at him when he got into the race back in 2015 and then they counted him out after the 2020 election. They assumed he was finished. They hoped he was finished. And that he’d never hold political office again. After all, he’s a convicted felon. Well, and ditto for the Wall Street types. Even those who worked with Trump, underestimated him. He’s just a real estate guy. He doesn’t understand the complexities of global supply chains.
But under Trump’s tariffs, America’s future was in peril, they said. They warned of a grim, grim event, speaking of grim sounding, Larry Summers today.
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LAWRENCE SUMMERS, FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY, CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: When people think that the rule of law is deteriorating. When people think that the country is being mismanaged, they sell its stocks, and they sell its bonds too. They sell everything, treasury, bonds, prices go up and their yields go down. So what this is saying is that we’re becoming more like an emerging market country, more like a country with a peso rather than a dollar as its currency.
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INGRAHAM: Whoops. Well, I guess that peso went “muy arriba” today. Well, five minutes later, he should have demanded to come back on camera to ecro (ph). The market had rebounded by then, 2200 points is up way more because Trump announced a brilliant move to pause the higher tariffs on countries negotiating with us, but meanwhile, to raise China’s tariffs to 125 percent. So wall off China by boxing them out, further weakening their economic power. It’s genius.
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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Many of you in the media clearly missed the art of the deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here. You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when in fact, we’ve seen the opposite effect. The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China.
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INGRAHAM: What the Larry Summers types, as smart as he is, and Rand Paul, as much as we like him, and the hedge funders, as rich as they are, don’t seem to understand is that Trump has always been consistent about his ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to raise living standards for all Americans. The tariffs were just one of his favorite tools to get there. Now think about what happened here. After he campaigned on tariffs during the 2024 campaign, he made his Liberation Day announcement. Then Trump watches the reaction.
The markets plummet, but countries rush in to negotiate. He told them, move quickly, because the doors were going to close. And then today, Trump decides to take the win, announcing a 10 percent tariff that stays on everyone, the market has already priced those in, but the key is a pause on the greater or reciprocal tariffs that took into account all the things that people do in other countries to screw us on trade, and they get a break all those negotiating countries, but China is the odd man out here, with its tariff staying really high at 125.
So now, Communist China, that has had the biggest trade deficit with us is now really hurting.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you waiting for President Xi to blink? How do you think this is all going to be resolved?
TRUMP: No, no. Look, for years, we’ve been ripped off and taken advantage of by China and others, in all fairness, but by China, that’s the big one. And just one of those things. You know, we’re making $2 billion a day right now, this country. $2 billion a day with tariffs, and they were making $2 billion a day.
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INGRAHAM: Look, China is going to have to find consumers for all the junk that their factories make, and their products will now be much harder to sell here. This leaves them the factories idling and losing money. We know this. We know that Europe doesn’t have the money to bail China out, even if they wanted to.
And going forward, Trump can, of course, tweak the tariffs, depending on how far these countries will go to make things right for our manufacturing sector. Make it fair. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary said it well this morning.
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SCOTT BESSENT, SECRETARY OF TREASURY: For the last four decades, basically since I began my career in Wall Street. Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before and it can continue to grow and do well, but for the next four years, the Trump agenda is focused on Main Street. It’s Main Streets’ turn; it’s Main Streets’ turn to hire workers. It’s Main Streets’ turn to drive investment, and it’s Main Streets’ turn to restore the American Dream.
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INGRAHAM: That should be on a bumper sticker. It’s Main Streets’ turn. Now this is the only way, as I said last night, on the Angle, that capitalism as we understand it, can be saved. After 30 years of selling out who Trump always said he would never forget.
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TRUMP: Under our leadership, the forgotten man and woman will be forgotten no longer. We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under God and together, we will make America powerful again. We will make America wealthy again.
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INGRAHAM: And he’s adding up the dollars and cents for this country. Now for decades, when he was focused on building skyscrapers, Donald Trump was already speaking out publicly about how other countries were ripping us off, because our politicians were stupid, and they made stupid trade deals.
Well, that’s because Trump, he’s always three steps ahead. He knew that if our middle class lost faith in the capitalist system, our entire system would come crashing down. After all, why would anyone without a college degree vote for a Republican who didn’t work to save our critical industries and our American jobs? Remember before Trump won in 2016, a Republican hadn’t won the White House since Bush in 2004 when he was re- elected. McCain, Romney both got creamed.
And over 15 years, Americans household income was essentially flat-lining. That’s not what the politicians promised, but that’s what hardworking Americans got, and they were not happy. So this dynamic was not sustainable, and Trump rightly knew that our system would eventually break down if it kept rewarding people who sent jobs overseas and penalized those who made products here at home. Made in America needed a boost, and before the China virus hit, Trump was on his way to getting us there.
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TRUMP: China was by far the biggest abuser in history and others also. But somebody had to do it. They had to stop because it was not sustainable. Last year, China made $1 trillion off trade with the United States. That’s not right, and now I’ve reversed it for a short period of time, but we made $2 billion, we’re making now $2 billion a day. And somebody had to do it, and if you didn’t do it, you wouldn’t have a country. We think it’s going to work out amazing.
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INGRAHAM: The blue collar voters turned out huge for MAGA in November. They knew that Trump was their only chance, only chance at survival, and today we see the blue collar folks were right again. Common sense beats the PhDs once again. And that’s the Angle.
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