Former Clinton White House aide Keith Boykin shot down smug Scott Jenning’s revisionist history after the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s illegal emergency tariffs.
During an exchange on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip this Friday, Jennings was asked about the aftermath of the ruling and a CEO’s comments that the government will have to pay the money the money back they illegally took from his company whether they find it inconvenient or not, and Jennings proceeded to heap praise on Dear Leader and completely ignore the temper tantrum Trump threw in response to the ruling.
Jennings also tossed out their ridiculous new talking point that this means the Democrats’ criticisms of the Supreme Court are invalid because of this one ruling, which was dismantled by Boykin after Boykin rightfully accused Jennings of sounding like someone on the Trump administration’s payroll.
PHILLIP: They said they spent $10 million paying Trump’s tariffs that we now know are illegal. And on top of that, just to circle back to what we were talking about, the CBO — this is not — this is one of many reports on this, but the CBO just recently said, U.S. businesses will absorb 30 percent of the import price increases by reducing their profit margins. The remaining 70 percent will be passed through to consumers by raising prices. So, the net effect of the tariffs will be to raise consumer prices by the full portion of the cost of the tariffs born domestically, 95 percent.
So, look, at the end of the day, he’s a business owner.
You can’t tell him he didn’t bear the cost of tariffs. He wrote the check.
JENNINGS: Well, which is it? You said all of it was passed through to the consumers. You said that most of it was absorbed by some of the companies. It sounds like maybe it might be a little bit of both. I mean, how you refund this? I have no idea. I mean, this is a total mess. You’re talking about massive amount of money.
PHILLIP: How did they charge it?
JENNINGS: And —
PHILLIP: They can refund what they charge.
JENNINGS: I guess. But if you want to go into the treasury and start writing checks on this, it feels, and the court acknowledged that it feels like it’s going to be a bit of a mess. I assume, Elie, there’ll be massive litigation about this over the next couple of years.
I’ll just say, you know, politically, today, you know, it was a big breaking news day, but I just think we ought to acknowledge something. This is a properly functioning government today. The president of the United States, the head of the executive branch, made a policy decision. The Supreme Court, it renders legal opinions about these kinds of decisions, made a decision, they said, you can’t do that. The president of the United States said, okay, I agree and I will acknowledge your decision. I’m going to use a different statute to try to do what I want to do. This is properly functioning government.
I’ll tell you one more thing. For every Democrat and every media person that has gone on for the last year or two about how this Supreme Court is a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump, that it’s not independent, that it does whatever he says to do, obviously, that narrative was obliterated today.
So, to me, I thought this was actually — I thought the ruling was sound. I think the president is sound to try other statutes. And I think the narratives about the court not being independent and the president not obeying the court were totally blown up today.
BOYKIN: That was a very charitable explanation of what took place today, Scott. You should be paid a lot of money from the Trump administration for helping to —
JENNINGS: Well, I get paid a lot of money here, to be clear.
BOYKIN: And in other places too. But you should be paid by the Trump administration for what you said, because the reality is that the president didn’t just accept the ruling, like you said he did.
JENNINGS: Yes, he did.
BOYKIN: He — no. He got up there.
JENNINGS: He acknowledged and he accepted it.
BOYKIN: He got up there at the press conference today, and he attacked the U.S. Supreme Court justices. He said that they should be embarrassed for their families for making a decision that stood up to him. He attacked them and said they were disloyal and unpatriotic. He said they were disloyal to the Constitution even. That’s more than disagreement. That’s irresponsible rhetoric.
And the problem is, Scott, even though today the Supreme Court did the right thing, according to everyone here at the table, apparently, except maybe you, Anthony, the truth is that this is the first major decision where they have actually disagreed with the president on any of his priorities.
So, yes, we got — they got one right, but that doesn’t negate everything else that they’ve done. Donald Trump doesn’t like to govern. Donald Trump likes to rule by decree, and the Supreme Court finally stood in and said, you can’t do that on this one issue.