Trump Team in Overdrive to Defend Him as Economy Officially Shrinks

Peter Navarro, one of Donald Trump’s top economic advisers, doesn’t think the news that U.S. gross domestic product shrank during the first quarter of 2025 is of any concern. In fact, he thinks the economy is doing well right now, aside from those tariffs.

“I gotta say just one thing about today’s news: That’s the best negative print I have ever seen in my life, and the markets need to, like, look beneath the surface of that,” Navarro said on CNBC Wednesday, adding that if one removes “the negative effects of the surge in imports because of the tariffs, you have 3 percent growth. So, we really like, uh, where we’re at now.”

Navarro’s words are quite a crazy spin on some rather negative economic news. The GDP fell 0.3 percent during the first three months of the year, the first quarter of negative growth since the beginning of 2022, and it’s all thanks to Trump’s ill-conceived economic moves.

Trump’s tariffs led to a surge in imports as companies tried to get ahead of them, consumer spending slowed, and federal government outlays declined thanks to the administration’s massive cuts spurred on by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“Maybe some of this negativity is due to a rush to bring in imports before the tariffs go up, but there is simply no way for policy advisors to sugarcoat this. Growth has simply vanished,” Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, told CNBC.

Navarro is trying to sugarcoat the news because he is the main architect behind Trump’s tariffs. The disgraced economist served four months in prison for contempt of Congress after he refused to testify about the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Navarro has every incentive to claim things are going according to plan, even as the market slides, and he has the support of a stubborn president behind him.

A federal judge freed Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student leader at Columbia University, on Wednesday.

Mahdawi, a U.S. permanent resident who has lived in the country for more than a decade, was arrested earlier this month as part of a trap set by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who detained him at an immigration interview that Mahdawi believed would be his last step in obtaining U.S. citizenship.

“The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said at a hearing Wednesday. “Mr. Mahdawi, I will order you released.”

Crawford ordered Mahdawi’s release on bail pending the resolution of his habeas petition, noting that the 34-year-old had received letters of support from more than 90 community members, including people of the Jewish faith, consistently describing him as “peaceful.”

Outside the courtroom, Mahdawi raised his hands above his head, sharing an uncomplicated message to the Trump administration.

“I am saying it clear and loud,” Mahdawi said. “To President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”

“What we are witnessing now and what we’re understanding is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King has said before: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he added.

Mahdawi’s case was a unique outlier against a backdrop of rushed and unconstitutional deportations that have shipped immigrants to ICE centers far from their homes. Unlike others, Mahdawi was allowed to remain in Vermont, where he lives and attends school remotely.

Mahdawi co-founded Columbia University’s Palestinian Student Union alongside detained peer Mahmoud Khalil, another legal U.S. permanent resident who was shipped to an ICE center in Louisiana in March, shortly after he was ripped away from his pregnant wife by plainclothes ICE agents. An immigration judge ruled April 11 that Khalil could be deported out of the country, but he has remained in the U.S. as he appeals the decision. The 30-year-old got a break in the case earlier Wednesday when another federal judge ruled that Khalil could argue in court that he was targeted for deportation due to his political views.

The Trump administration has leaned on a WWII-era policy, the Alien Enemies Act, to justify their immigration crackdown while ignoring immigrants’ due process rights, sometimes defying court orders in the process.

Donald Trump has justified the infractions by claiming that immigration into the country is tantamount to an “invasion,” and has described the current era as a “time of war.”

Arguing in a Department of Homeland Security notice justifying Mahdawi’s detention, State Secretary Marco Rubio wrote that Mahdawi’s continued “presence” in the U.S. could create “adverse foreign policy consequences.” In other petitions to boot immigrants out of the country, Rubio has effectively likened free speech to a crime, arguing that protests of U.S. involvement in the war in Gaza should be construed as deportable offenses.

Mahdawi grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, where most of his family remains. He has been outspoken about his experiences growing up in the occupied region, describing the murders of his friends and loved ones by Israeli forces, and the violence he experienced when he was shot in the leg by an Israeli soldier at the age of 15.

“Before coming to this country, freedom was just a concept,” Mahdawi told NPR on Tuesday. “But the actual experience of freedom of movement to travel among 50 states, freedom to breathe the breeze of the ocean, and to feel your toes in the sand. This is the first place I have experienced this freedom of speech where I will not be actually retaliated against or punished for saying my mind.”

“Do I still feel this way?” he continued. “I think it’s in jeopardy. I think this is a red flag, not only to me, but to the American people who care about freedom, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have the hope that this country will fulfill its promise.”

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s economy has not been doing well, but you’d never think that if you got your news from the president.

On Wednesday, Trump once again blamed the market’s poor performance on the last guy in office, claiming on Truth Social that the country was still suffering under “Biden’s Stock Market.”

“I didn’t take over until January 20th,” Trump wrote. “Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

Regardless of your opinion on his presidency, Joe Biden’s economy was fruitful by a number of metrics. His tenure in the White House saw historic job gains, curated business development, and decreased unemployment. Biden’s stability in office also aided the market’s steady growth, helping it repeatedly defy negative forecasts and grow gross domestic product by 12.6 percent, which the last administration celebrated as a “historically robust expansion.”

Further still, some economists believe Trump wouldn’t have seen a second term in office if it wasn’t for Biden’s market success. In the days immediately following the presidential election, the University of Chicago School of Business’s Booth Review pitched an economic theory that Trump’s win was, in large part, due to Biden’s strong economy, arguing that Americans are more likely to take risks at the voter booth with low-tax candidates when the economy is strong. (Conversely, the Booth Review argued that Americans historically vote for Democrats during periods of economic instability, such as the Great Depression, which saw the rise of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Great Recession, which sparked Barack Obama’s presidency.)

And unfortunately for Trump, his numbers are bad. A 100-day report on Trump’s economy found that GDP in the first quarter decreased by 0.3 percent, a startling drop from 2024’s fourth quarter, which saw GDP increase by 2.4 percent.

“Compared to the fourth quarter, the downturn in real GDP in the first quarter reflected an upturn in imports, a deceleration in consumer spending, and a downturn in government spending that were partly offset by upturns in investment and exports,” the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Wednesday.

And it’s not the only negative measure of Trump’s performance. A report released Tuesday by the Conference Board found that the consumer confidence index fell by 7.9 points in April, bringing overall consumer confidence to 86 and closer toward the 80-point threshold that “usually signals a recession ahead.”

The number of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the next six months (32.1 percent) was also alarming, reaching heights not seen since April 2009, when the country was in the midst of the Great Recession.

The root cause of the instability was “high financial market volatility in April” that hit American consumers’ stock portfolios and retirement savings hard and fast, per the Conference Board’s report. That was almost singularly due to Trump’s machinations in the White House, which included releasing (and stalling) a sweeping and vindictive tariff proposal plan that economists observed (and the White House eventually confirmed) was founded on bad math.

Elon Musk has departed from the White House as he prepares to end his tenure as the department’s leader, according to reporting from the New York Post.

“Instead of meeting with him in person, I’m talking to him on the phone, but it’s the same net effect,” maintained White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who later noted that the billionaire “hasn’t been here physically, but it really doesn’t matter much.” Musk is said to be officially stepping down sometime in May.

While Musk is leaving DOGE headquarters, which is just a short walk from the Oval Office, DOGE and all of the staffers he appointed will remain.

“The people that are doing this work are here doing good things and paying attention to the details. He’ll be stepping back a little, but he’s certainly not abandoning it,” Wiles said. “And his people are definitely not.”

Musk’s departure sounds great to a majority of Americans (and Tesla shareholders), but reports of a clean break between Trump and Musk—one of the defining characters of the second-term MAGAverse—are greatly exaggerated. Musk is keeping one foot in and one foot out, offering competing images of what his role will be in the future.

“I’ll have to continue doing [DOGE] for, I think, probably the remainder of the president’s term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back, which [it] will do if it has the chance,” Musk said on a Tesla call, contradicting his comments about stepping away. “I think I’ll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful.”

A day or two per week on government matters. This guy isn’t going anywhere. As The New Republic’s Alex Shephard wrote, it’s much more likely that Musk realizes that his public relationship with Trump (who is currently at his most unpopular) is toxic for the value of his multiple businesses. Musk is only changing his public relationship with Trump and DOGE, while fully maintaining it in private.

Donald Trump isn’t giving a clear answer regarding Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s future.

On Tuesday, Trump sat for an interview with ABC News’s Terry Moran, who asked the president if he had “100 percent confidence in Pete Hegseth.”

Trump’s reply didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

“I don’t have 100 percent confidence in anything. OK? Anything. Do I have 100 percent; it’s a stupid question. Look—” Trump said, before Moran interjected.

“It’s a pretty important position,” said Moran.

“I have—no, no no. You don’t have 100 percent. Only a liar would say ‘I have 100 percent confidence.’ I don’t have 100 percent confidence that we’re gonna finish this interview,” Trump said.

While the interview did continue, Hegseth would have probably preferred a stronger show of support from his boss at that moment. The former Fox News host has been under fire for the past several weeks over his use of private chats on the Signal app to discuss attack plans on Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, as well as his manic efforts to find leakers at the Department of Defense.

The “Signalgate” scandal has dogged Hegseth as worse revelations have come out every day, from the fact that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was present in one of the group chats to the fact that a second chat contained Hegseth’s brother and wife. Hegseth has refused to resign and still has the support of the president for the time being. The question is whether Trump will eventually get fed up with the negative coverage, or if there’s a new worse revelation about Hegseth on the horizon.

Donald Trump seems ready to escalate his assault on the judiciary, stating that “nothing” would stop his mass immigration efforts.

During a rally in Michigan Tuesday night marking his god-awful first 100 days in office, the president vowed to continue defying judges who ruled against him.

“We cannot allow a handful of Communist, radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the president of the United States,” Trump said.

“Judges are trying to take away the power given to the president to keep our country safe. It’s not a good thing, but I hope for the sake of our country that the Supreme Court is gonna save this, because we have to do something. These people are just looking to destroy our country,” Trump continued.

“Nothing will stop me in the mission to keep America safe again,” Trump warned.

Trump has already acted in defiance of the Supreme Court, refusing to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was wrongly deported to prison in El Salvador as the result of an “administrative error.” When Time magazine asked about Abrego Garcia, he claimed his lawyers said they didn’t need to do anything about it.

When asked about it again during an ABC News exclusive interview Tuesday, Trump made several excuses for violating the order, before saying, “I’m not the one making this decision, we have lawyers who don’t want to do this.”

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ordered a pause on deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, which the Trump administration was using to remove detainees it alleged were gang members. To expedite the removals, detainees were denied their due process, resulting in the mass removal of individuals whose supposed gang affiliation was never proven, many of whom had no criminal record at all.

The Supreme Court ruled that detainees must be given the opportunity to “actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” which the Trump administration then proceeded to ignore, preparing to remove another group of immigrants. The high court then blocked removals altogether “until further order of this court.”

Trump’s latest threat against judges feels particularly disturbing given a comment Monday from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who wouldn’t rule out arresting Supreme Court justices.

President Donald Trump grew angry as a reporter persistently questioned him about his refusal to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a prison in El Salvador—and in so doing, Trump accidentally demolished his whole case against the wrongfully deported Salvadoran man.

In the interview, ABC News’s Terry Moran pointed out that Trump has the power to pick up the phone, call El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and with the “power of the presidency” get Bukele to release him.

“I could,” Trump replied. “If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.”

At the most basic level, this destroys one of the Trump administration’s central arguments for leaving Abrego Garcia to rot in an El Salvadoran gulag. Administration officials say they have no power to compel Bukele to release him because it would intrude on Salvadoran sovereignty to dictate that country’s treatment of one of its own.

But Trump just admitted that if he called Bukele and asked him to do this, his fellow dictator would in fact comply. This wrecks the fake distinction upon which Trump has hung his whole argument—the one between compelling Bukele to release Abrego Garcia and merely requesting that Bukele do so.

That phony distinction survives in the MAGA information universe—and in Trump’s head—because it’s insulated inside a propaganda bubble from precisely this sort of questioning from Moran. Here in the real world, of course Bukele would release Abrego Garcia if Trump asked him to. We are paying El Salvador to hold all these prisoners at our request.

But the whole thing gets even worse. Moran pointed out that if Trump has the power to call Bukele and get Abrego Garcia released, then his refusal to do so violates the Supreme Court’s April 10 directive that the administration “facilitate” his return.

“I’m not the one making this decision,” Trump answered testily. “We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”

But this also fails. It either means Trump is knowingly violating the Supreme Court and hiding behind his lawyers to do so or that his lawyers are deceiving him about what the high court has ordered—revealing he’s weak and subject to manipulation.

Perhaps his lawyers are making a very, er, lawyerly case to him that the court’s ruling gives Trump a middle ground to sort-of try to get Abrego Garcia back without succeeding. But this isn’t a defense either. It would mean they are playing bullshit lawyer games to avoid doing what’s lawful and right. Regardless, all signs are that Trump hasn’t taken any steps to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

Trump lost his temper when the topic turned to MS-13. Trump claimed again that Abrego Garcia’s tattoos show he’s a gang member, which experts seriously doubt. Even worse, Trump appeared to suggest the symbols “M,” “S,” “1,” and “3” are literally tattooed on Abrego Garcia’s hands.

“It says M-S-one-three,” Trump said.

When Moran noted correctly that those images were digitally added—to provide a pretend visual aid to the tattoos—Trump unraveled, glaring at Moran and ranting that he should be thankful for getting this interview at all.

The evidence for Abrego Garcia’s alleged MS-13 ties is extremely thin. It’s largely based on the testimony of a Maryland cop who was suspended soon after and indicted for serious professional misconduct involving the sharing of confidential information with a sex worker. He pleaded guilty and was removed from the force.

The MS-13 claim isn’t just a vile smear. The idea that Abrego Garcia poses a severe public safety threat is the foundation for the administration’s entire rationale for not bringing him back and attempting to remove him again via lawful channels. Note that Trump suggested to Moran that if Abrego Garcia were not a gang member, Trump would bring him back.

So the administration should have to answer for the fact that the whole basis for not doing so is largely the finding of one disgraced cop. Yet neither Trump nor any senior administration officials have ever been questioned on this point.

To celebrate his 100th day in office, Donald Trump held a rally in Michigan—where he, his team, and his fans celebrated the idea of unconstitutionally keeping him in office for a third term.

At one point, Trump smiled as the crowd erupted into a chant, calling for him to stay in power.

“Three!” the crowd roared.

“Well, we actually already served three, if you count. But remember, I like the victories, I like the three victories which we absolutely had. I just don’t like the results of the middle term,” Trump said, continuing to ignore the fact that he lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden.

Over the last month, Trump has repeatedly said he was “not joking” about pursuing a third term in office. The language first appeared in March during a phone call with NBC News’s Kristin Welker, when he said that he was actually very serious about potentially circumventing the Constitution in order to lead the country for another four years after his second term ends.

“No, no I’m not joking. I’m not joking,” the president said at the time, agreeing with Welker that one such plan to keep him in office involved having Vice President JD Vance front the next Republican presidential ticket with Trump as his number two—roles that they would then switch once back in office.

But the alarming comment reappeared in an April 22 interview with Time magazine, when the president said, “There are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known” for keeping him in power.

“But I don’t believe in loopholes. I don’t believe in using loopholes,” said the convicted felon, who has been accused of running scams and shams and was judged in September 2023 to have committed business fraud.

The non-loophole alternative to remaining in power would have Trump formally run for a third term—and would require a near-impossible amendment to the Constitution that would have to pass with the consent of most of the country.

As outlined in Article 5 of the Constitution, any such alteration requires at least two-thirds of the Senate and the House to agree on the modification, with that change then requiring ratification by a minimum of three-quarters of states in the nation.

A second approach to repealing the term-limiting amendment could be via a constitutional convention, though two-thirds of states would need to support the motion to have one at all, and any proposed changes to an amendment would still require ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Regardless of the enormous uphill climb, the business mogul is already making money off a potential third term and building his brand to remain in office in the process. Red caps reading “Trump 2028” in white lettering are retailing on the online Trump store for $50 a pop. In an interview with Axios, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the merchandise was “just a hat” and did not suggest that Trump was thinking of staying in office past his current term—though she didn’t neglect to insinuate the alleged popularity of such an idea, adding that the caps have been “flying off the shelves.”

But Trump’s bubble defies reality. Recent polling suggests that Trump’s popularity has nosedived in recent months, in large part due to his whiplash tariff proposals.

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell by 7.9 points in April, bringing overall consumer confidence to 86, according to a report published Tuesday. Consumer futures were brought to a 13-year low, with outlooks on the economy dropping by 12.5 points to 54.5 points. That’s well below the threshold of 80 that “usually signals a recession ahead,” according to the Conference Board.

And an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published Sunday found that Trump’s approval rating had plummeted to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—marking the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began roughly 80 years ago.

Former CEO and current Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—who wants robots to replace the American worker and wants you to shut up and take your Social Security cuts—also wants a section of the population to commit generations of their families to working in factories.

“It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past but to do the great jobs of the future,” Lutnick said Tuesday on MSNBC while arguing for more community college education, before his argument got much worse. 

“This is the new model, where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here. You know, we let the auto plants go overseas. Right now you should see an auto plant, it’s highly automated but the people—the four, five thousand people who work there—they are trained to take care of those robotic arms, they are trained to keep the air conditioning system.” 

There’s nothing wrong with working in a factory, on its face. But Lutnick, the son of a college professor and the grandson of a dry-cleaning store owner, is suggesting that millions of people ought to commit to a generational lack of upward mobility under the guise of creating a new class of American labor. What Lutnick is so enthusiastically describing—being bound to the same job in the same industry for decades and decades—is serfdom. And that serfdom won’t even be widely available as automation takes over and the only job left is to watch the robots and make sure they don’t overheat. Howard Lutnick and Donald Trump view the domestic workforce as a homogenous, voiceless mass happy to live in the dreary mediocrity they’re forced into.  

Even Donald Trump’s favorite network is facing backlash for not bending the knee enough.

Speaking with Fox News on Tuesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller unabashedly told the network that they should fire their pollster, notifying them that the White House “does not acknowledge” Fox’s negative polling about Trump.

The terse exchange followed a point-blank question by anchor John Roberts, who asked Miller to comment on polling data that indicated “a lot of people think [Trump’s] spending too much time on tariffs and not enough time on the economy and lowering prices.”

But Miller did not comment on the data. Instead, he opted to cut the network down a notch, leveraging Trump’s authority and base to suggest that the network take an even more sycophantic approach.

“I don’t want to make things weird for you, John,” Miller said. “But it is our opinion that Fox News needs to fire its pollster.”

“And I won’t surprise you with that, I don’t think you’re surprised that I’m saying that, but the Fox News pollster has always been wrong about President Trump,” Miller continued, harkening back to polling from last summer that suggested former Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidential election.

“We don’t acknowledge any of that polling,” Miller added.

When Fox returned from a commercial break, Roberts noted that the network would continue to defend its work, regardless of the Trump administration’s prerogative.

“You might have been watching earlier when Stephen Miller joined us here on America Reports, he made a remark that was critical of our polling,” Roberts said. “But here at Fox News we stand by our polling as we always have.”

Unfortunately for Miller, Fox News isn’t alone. Multiple polls show Trump is deeply unpopular for his economic policies.

Miller previously served as the senior adviser for policy and White House director of speechwriting during Trump’s first term. The far-right politico has made a name for himself for his vicious anti-immigrant policies, which include proposals to build mass deportation camps and deploy the military and the National Guard to seal the border, promising a forthcoming reality of “large-scale raids” and “throughput facilities.”

He’s long been viewed as one of the most apparent and rigid ties between Trump and the white nationalist agenda. Miller, a mentee of Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, has had a profound impact on the president-elect’s language and policy on immigration, despite entering Trumpworld with little policy or legal expertise.

He was the architect of Trump’s first Muslim travel ban and has been a vocal proponent of family separation at the U.S. border, as well as limiting citizenship for legal immigrants. During his time in Trump’s first term, leaked emails revealed that Miller promoted white nationalist articles and books, especially on the idea that nonwhite people are replacing white people.

Miller’s rhetoric has been roundly condemned—including by his uncle, Dr. David S. Glosser, who in a scathing 2018 piece for Politico Magazine condemned his far-right relative as a hypocrite for drafting policy that would have prevented their own family from seeking refuge on America’s shores in the twentieth century.

This story has been updated.