Fox Host Pushes Back Hard on Trump Commerce Secretary’s Tariff Claims

In a rare display of credibility, even Fox hosts aren’t buying the Trump administration’s lies about tariffs.

In an interview Wednesday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney pointed to the rising cost of aluminum, steel, and copper from Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported metals, which went into effect the same day.

“That could ripple through the entire manufacturing sector and raise the level of inflation. Could that lead to a recession?” Varney pressed Lutnick.

Lutnick dodged the question, proceeded to mansplain inflation, and—of course—blame national debt on the Democrats.

“Let’s take a step back and remember inflation, right? Inflation comes from a government printing too much money. The Biden administration having a $2 trillion deficit,” Lutnick said.

“You don’t get inflation from having a tariff, because what a tariff says is if it’s made in Europe, if it’s made foreign, it might cost a little more, but that which is made in America does not cost more,” he went on, before implying the solution is merely to support American manufacturers.

“We make plenty of steel in America.”

Seemingly stunned by Lutnick’s ignorance, Varney pointed to the obvious. “Domestic producers can’t keep up with the demand,” he said.

He’s right. In 2023, the U.S. imported 23.6 million tons of steel and imported 44 percent of its aluminum in the same year, a demand that is much too high for struggling American metal producers to meet.

A failure to meet demand will lead to higher prices on everything from cars, refrigerators, beers, and canned goods to home appliances, experts warn.

“The supply is limited, the demand is strong, the price is going up,” Varney added, pressing the former private equity CEO.

Lutnick’s solution? Build more manufacturing plants, which could take years. All the while, American manufacturers and consumers will continue to suffer from Trump’s disastrous global trade war.

Donald Trump is getting rid of a program that supports affordable housing, threatening the homes of thousands of Americans.

The $1 billion Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, which maintains livable residences for low-income residents around the country, is being slashed as part of many cuts and funding freezes at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. With these cuts, poor Americans will be tossed out of hundreds of thousands of low-rent apartments, some of them in dire need of repair.

The program has already spent enough funds to upgrade at least 25,000 affordable units, and how it will be shuttered is yet to be determined. But, according to internal documents obtained by the Associated Press, the program is being “terminated” by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The program was passed by Congress in 2022 in order to fund energy-efficiency improvements with grants and loans to owners of affordable housing. With the funds, these owners can replace or repair heating and cooling systems, leaky roofs, old insulation, and windows and pay for flood-proofing.

Ultimately, beyond making these residences more energy efficient, the program requires those who utilize its funds to keep their buildings affordable for up to 25 years. The money is also used as leverage to invest in other major repairs and renovations to keep the buildings habitable.

DOGE has cut funds and programs across the federal government without regard to the purposes they serve or the lives that depend on them. Many of the people who depend on this HUD program are low-income seniors or destitute families who have little or no other options. Ultimately, Trump and Musk are taking aim at a safety net they probably don’t know exists. Do they even care?

A new CNN/SSRS poll shows a majority of Americans don’t trust the way President Trump is handling the economy—lower than any point during his first term.

Fifty-six percent of Americans disapprove of his economic actions, while 52 percent disapprove of how he’s handled the federal budget, and 61 percent of Americans disapprove of the tariffs specifically. The findings come as the stock market plummets further while Trump levies tariffs on allies in China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union. 

Fifty-three  percent of Americans also have an unfavorable view of Elon Musk, who has been by Trump’s side carrying out his mass cuts and purges of the federal government. About 62 percent said that Musk had neither the experience nor the judgment to “make changes to the way the government works.” And 62 percent also believe that the DOGE cuts “will go too far and important federal government programs will be shut down.”

Trump has yet to respond to the poll.

In his latest attack on education and transgender rights, Trump is punishing the University of Maine System, the state’s largest educational organization, which spans seven universities, after the Democratic governor refused to ban trans athletes from participating in women’s sports.

According to an email Monday obtained by Bangor Daily News, the Department of Agriculture has frozen millions of dollars in funding to UMS and has been directed to “no longer issue any payments or any other releases of funding” to the University of Maine System or Columbia University.

“This pause is temporary in nature while USDA evaluates if it should take any follow-on actions related to prospective Title VI or Title IX violations,” the email reads, referring to Trump’s executive order banning trans women athletes from participating in women’s sports. “Please take any necessary actions to effectuate this direction from leadership. This pause will remain in effect until further notice.”

Last month, following outrage over a transgender athlete who won a statewide high school pole vault event, Trump singled out Maine Governor Janet Mills at an address to the nation’s governors and told her to comply with the executive order … or else.

“You better do it, because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t,” Trump threatened Mills at the time.

“See you in court,” Mills replied, refusing to legitimize gender discrimination.

In the following days, Trump unleashed an assault on Maine’s education system. The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services targeted the state’s Education Department, and the USDA launched an investigation into the University of Maine.

“President Trump has made it abundantly clear: taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars will not support institutions that discriminate against women,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement on February 21. “USDA is committed to upholding the President’s executive order, meaning any institution that chooses to disregard it can count on losing future funding.”

As a land-grant university, UMS receives more than $100 million in funding from the USDA. Last year, the school received nearly $30 million to support research that benefited farmers and fishermen, a UMS spokesperson said in an email response to the USDA, the Bangor Daily News reported.

UMS is the second university to be punished in Trump’s war on dissent. Last month, he froze $400 million in contracts to Columbia University for failing to address antisemitism on campus, despite the school having expelled two students who took part in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

At least nine other schools, including New York University and Harvard University, could be next.

Greenland’s parliamentary election results have thrown a massive wrench in Donald Trump’s fantasies of acquiring the mineral-rich territory.

The center-right, pro-business party Demokraatit won nearly 30 percent of the vote on Tuesday, and the party seemed less than open to Trump’s wild dreams of annexation.

“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders. And we want our own independence in the future. And we want to build our own country by ourselves, not with his hope,” party leader Jens-Friederik Nielsen told SkyNews on the eve of the election.

Nielsen has previously called Trump’s unwanted advances onto Greenland “a threat to our political independence.”

In general, Demokraatit prefers a slower route to independence.

“People want change.… We want more business to finance our welfare,” Nielsen said, after the results. “We don’t want independence tomorrow, we want a good foundation.”

This approach, which flies in the face of Trump’s pleas to have Denmark cede the island territory, certainly seems to be gaining popularity among the 56,000 Greenlanders—or at least the ones who voted Tuesday. Demokraatit won only 9 percent of the vote four years ago, according to the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation, or KNR TV.

Naleraq, the most aggressively pro-independence party, came in second in the election with almost 25 percent of the vote, up from 12 percent four years ago.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mute Bourup Egede’s left-wing party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, or United Inuit, won only 21 percent of the vote, down from the winningest 36 percent four years ago. Egede had called for the election in February, citing a “serious time” in Greenland.

The election was called amid ongoing threats from Trump that he would levy tariffs to squeeze Denmark into relinquishing the territory, which the president has said has great geopolitical significance to the United States, as well as massive mineral resources.

During an address to Congress last month, Trump claimed to “strongly support” Greenland’s right to self-determination, while also promising that the territory would be his. “We need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump said.

Trump’s rhetoric about making the territory the “fifty-second state” reportedly electrified the independence movement in Greenland—but evidently not enough to make way for a government that’s willing to play ball with his outrageous demands.

In his congratulation to the Demokraatit Party, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said that the government would likely continue to to “deal with massive pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump.”

He warned that “it’s not the case that you can just take part of the Danish Realm—the future of Greenland is based on what the Greenlandic people and government want.”