Scott Bessent Finally Admits the Truth About Trump’s Tariff Costs

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was finally able to admit that tariffs are indeed a tax on American importers and consumers, as Trump’s tariffs affecting virtually the entire world took effect on Thursday. 

“We’ve got a tariff of 50 percent on Brazil now, I think. And so, if um, someone here, an importer, wants to buy Brazilian products today or tomorrow and import them, they’re gonna pay 50 percent through the Treasury,” MSNBC’s Eugene Robinson said to Bessent, explaining the policy to the treasury secretary as if he were a child. “So who writes that check?” 

Bessent has had some issues answering this question directly in the recent past, and he began to equivocate once again. 

“Well, couple of things. First, we could have substitutions, so there’s very little that only comes from Brazil,” Bessent replied. “It could come from Argentina, it could come from—”

“But assuming it does come from Brazil, say, or it comes from any country with a tariff,” Robinson said, pulling him back to the actual question. “Who writes the check to the Treasury?”

“Well, the check is written to the person who receives it at the dock, in the U.S.” 

“Mhm, the check, is, quote, ‘written by the person who receives it at the dock.’ So the tariff is paid in this country by the importer, is that right?” Robinson said, again highlighting the crux of the matter.

“But the Brazilian exporter could decide that they wanna keep market share, they could lower their price to the full 50 percent of the tariff—”

“Right, they could eat part of the cost.”

“Which is what we’ve seen,” Bessent continued unconvincingly.

“Uh-huh, OK, OK. But the check is written by the importer right, at the dock?” 

“Right, and then the importer can pass it on or not.” 

Not only is Bessent doing everything in his power to avoid the truth of the situation—U.S. importers foot the bill here—he’s also spinning pipe dreams regarding the likelihood of American companies or other countries willingly volunteering to “eat part of the cost.” Trump’s tariffs will raise prices on importers, and those importers will pass those prices on to consumers. Products from Brazil, India, and countless other countries will grow more expensive. Trump has already publicly feuded with Walmart after the corporation said it would refuse to eat tariff costs and would raise prices. 

“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS  last year, far more than expected,” Trump wrote in May. “Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” 

American consumers should expect more lies and business confrontations from this administration while prices everywhere rise. 

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is basically a Democrat, according to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

AIPAC, one of the largest lobbies in the United States, excoriated Greene in a fundraising email to its supporters Thursday for describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide,” likening the MAGA Republican to some of the most progressive voices on Capitol Hill.

“You expect anti-Israel smears from Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar,” the group said. “But now, Marjorie Taylor Greene has joined their ranks—spouting the same vile rhetoric and voting against the US-Israel alliance.”

Advocates, academics, United Nations experts, and human rights groups in and out of Israel have said the state, founded in the wake of the Holocaust, is committing genocide in Palestine. Last week, Greene joined them.

“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” the far-right Georgia congresswoman wrote on X at the time.

AIPAC derided Greene’s comments as “disgusting.”

A U.N.-backed international food security body reported last week that the “worst-case famine scenario” is currently occurring in Gaza, where Israeli forces have restricted local access to food, water, electricity, and medicine. The report fell short of labeling the situation a full-blown famine, though at least 197 starvation deaths have occurred in the war-torn region, local health authorities told Vatican News.

“This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement, underscoring that the “trickle of aid” to Gaza “must become an ocean.”

Yet help may not be on the way. Speaking with reporters Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Donald Trump had effectively given Israel a pass to take over the remainder of Gaza.

This Republican woman running for office thinks women shouldn’t run for office.

Mylie Biggs, the daughter of Trump-loving Representative Andy Biggs, is running for a seat in the Arizona state Senate. And a year ago, she went on a podcast and said that she doesn’t believe women should hold political office, reported the Phoenix New Times.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I would vote for any female. I don’t know if females should be in office,” Biggs said on the show.

“There are a lot of really good women in office, I’m not trying to hate on anyone—like, some really good congresswomen,” Biggs added. “Yeah, I don’t think women should hold office in general. That’s my position. That’s my stance. I think women should run the home.”

Biggs launched her campaign in late June, saying on X, “My parents taught me to love my country, the Constitution, and to value my freedoms. I’ve watched so many good people in my life serve this country in the military and in public office. I too seek to serve.”

But on the podcast, Biggs didn’t seem interested in serving—or even in working at all. She lamented how “modern feminism” has changed the world, “starting with women’s right to vote.”

“I hate a 9-to-5 schedule,” Biggs added. “I get home, and I don’t want to do anything else. Like, women aren’t built for this.”

Since announcing, Biggs has not submitted a campaign finance report, and has not yet raised any money, according to the Phoenix New Times.

Many women are “built for this,” but perhaps Biggs is not one of them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Thursday that Donald Trump is totally fine with his illegal takeover of Gaza. 

During an interview with Fox News, host Bill Hemmer pressed Netanyahu on whether the U.S. government had agreed with his plan to fully occupy Gaza.

“Has President Trump given the green light for your plan to take over the remaining 25 percent of Gaza and occupy all of it?” Hemmer asked.

“Well, you know, he understands that it’s Israel who’s gonna do the fighting. It’s not American soldiers,” Netanyahu replied. 

“Did he give you a yes?” Hemmer pressed. 

“Well, he just says, ‘I know Israel will do what it has to do,’ and we haven’t gotten into that kind of discussion,” Netanyahu said. 

Netanyahu said that he and Trump had discussed conducting a “humanitarian search” in Gaza before Israel conducts its “final” military action, which would involve moving the remaining Palestinians into so-called “safe zones.” But in Gaza, humanitarian safe zones are a common target of the Israeli military, leaving Palestinians with nowhere left to go.  

The prime minister also said that Trump had agreed that they need to lay down “key principles” the day after Israel’s final purge. While Netanyahu said that a civilian government needed to be installed in Palestine (he claimed to have no interest in ruling the region), he noted that Israel would need to be in charge of Gaza’s security to ensure that Hamas did not reemerge.

Netanyahu revealed on Fox News that Israel intended to occupy all of Gaza “in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza, and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel.” 

“That’s what we want to do. We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” he said. 

Netanyahu has directed the massive military campaign that has killed more than 60,000 people, causing widespread destruction and famine. Now he claims he wants to liberate the very people his military has been illegally and indiscriminately killing. 

After successfully forcing Columbia and Brown to hand over granular admissions data to the administration, President Donald Trump seems to be taking aim at a bigger target: every university in the United States.

Trump is expected to sign an order Thursday mandating that universities turn over applicant data in order to prove they’re not carrying out affirmative action policies, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X.

Leavitt’s post gave no further details on how the government would make these determinations, or what consequences the universities would face if they refused to cooperate.

Trump’s battle against the Ivy League appears to have been a slippery slope leading to a grab for total control over higher education. The president has threatened universities with enormous funding cuts if they don’t follow his orders: dismantling anything purportedly related to diversity, equity, and inclusion; harshly punishing pro-Palestinian protesters; and giving the federal government sway over curriculums and entire academic departments in the name of combating antisemitism.

Since the 2023 Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action, universities have already significantly reworked their admissions processes and criteria. This would go even further, ceding enormous control to the state over not only who gets accepted to these schools but what goes on there. There’s nothing stopping the federal government from using and misusing this data as leverage to further sue, threaten, and claw back funds from universities.

Nothing is more important in Donald Trump’s second administration than subservience and loyalty.

FBI Director Kash Patel ordered the ousting of two agents at the bureau Thursday, including Brian Driscoll, who served as the acting director for the agency at the beginning of Trump’s second term.

Driscoll, an 18-year agent, was accidentally appointed acting director of the FBI. But he made a new name for himself in February when he adamantly resisted the president’s early efforts to excise bureau employees.

“Last night I was informed that tomorrow will be my last day in the FBI,” Driscoll wrote in a note to his colleagues, obtained by MSNBC. “I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I currently have no answers. No cause has been articulated at this time.

“Please know that it has been the honor of my life to serve alongside each of you,” Driscoll continued. “Thank you for allowing me to stand on your shoulders throughout it all. Our collective sacrifices for those we serve is, and will always be, worth it. I regret nothing. You are my heroes, and I remain in your debt.”

The Trump administration intended to install Robert Kissane as Christopher Wray’s replacement in January. But a clerical error instead placed Driscoll at the top of the agency, with Kissane acting as his number two—an oversight that wasn’t corrected until the Senate confirmed Patel at the end of February.

The issue came to a head just two weeks after Trump’s inauguration. When the White House demanded the names of the bureau staff who were involved in the January 6 probe, Driscoll refused, sparking accusations from Justice Department official Emil Bove that there was “insubordination” among the FBI’s leadership.

Driscoll’s full-throated defense of his colleagues was well received by the department, turning him into an unexpected champion defending the agency from the Trump administration’s encroachment. Current and former FBI agents circulated memes referring to the 45-year-old as “Saint Driz.”

New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani excoriated Andrew Cuomo’s recent call with President Donald Trump as a “betrayal” to the entire city.

“It is at this very site that we understand the cost of this news, that former Governor Cuomo has been conspiring with President Trump about the fate of this city, about the future of this city, about the facts of this race,” Mamdani said at a Thursday press conference. “It is knowledge that is a betrayal of everything we stand for as New Yorkers. It is knowledge that disappoints us, and yet it does not surprise us. Because it builds on a history that we have seen with this former governor, a history of trying to hide that which he knows is offensive to the values of this city from the people of this city. We see that with this call itself.”

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Cuomo “spoke about the race directly” with the president in recent weeks. Though it’s not clear who initiated the call, or what the two spoke about, Mamdani pointed out that it taking place is enough to condemn Cuomo.

“We know that this former governor has very little regard, whether it be for the Democratic Party, the democratic process, or for Democrats themselves,” Mamdani said. “Because he would rather look past having been beaten by close to 13 points, by a campaign that amassed more votes than any Democratic primary winner in New York City history, to the extent that he would actually have a conversation with the very president who is stealing food from the hungry, who is throwing New Yorkers and Americans from coast to coast off of their health care, and doing so all in service of yet another significant wealth transfer between those who do not have enough in their pocket to those who have more than they know what to do with.”

The Times detailed that Trump and Cuomo’s phone call came as Trump reportedly considers intervening in New York’s mayoral race to help reinforce the anti-Mamdani Wall Street base that has scrambled to get behind either Cuomo or Mayor Eric Adams. Trump has already attacked Mamdani, making unsubstantiated claims about his citizenship and calling him a “communist lunatic.”

It’s clear that Cuomo, who was unable to overcome his sexual harassment and corruption scandals in the primary, is turning back to his true home with the wealthy elites of New York. Trump and Cuomo go way back, as Cuomo’s father, Mario, served as lawyer to the president’s father in the 1980s.

“We know that Andrew Cuomo will sell working people out for his interests, for the interests of the billionaires that supported him, for the interests of Donald Trump. Because all of those interests are lining up as one and the same,” Mamdani continued. “It is time for us to say enough. It is time for us to make clear that what this city deserves is a mayor who when he sees Donald Trump attacking the people of this city, will stand up and fight back against that vision, [and] will not get on the phone with the architect of that vision to speak about a race that we already know should be a referendum on how to make the most expensive city in the United States of America affordable. Not a question of how we can install yet another ambassador for Washington, D.C., in City Hall.”

Unlike Sydney Sweeney, MAGA Representative Mike Collins of Georgia needed AI to generate his great jeans.

Collins shared a cringey AI-generated video on X Wednesday, as a nod to the controversial American Eagle denim campaign that is being fiercely defended by the right, including by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

The video made by Brenden Dilley, a far-right podcaster and seemingly self-proclaimed lead of Trump’s “meme team,” showed Collins’s head pasted on a male model’s denim-clad body. The figure brushes his hand through his hair, glowering at the camera before he turns, strutting away as Charlie Boy’s 2009 song “I Look Good” plays in the background.

The onscreen caption reads, “Mike Collins Has Great Jeans,” but the Georgia Republican added his own message in his repost.

“The Georgia cotton industry supports over 53,000 jobs, has a $3 BN economic impact, and makes some of the finest jeans around. I will always fight for our farmers, growers and producers, and Georgia’s rural culture and economy,” he wrote.

Users on X accused Collins of copying former Senator David Perdue, who donned a faded denim jacket in an attempt to appeal to everyday Georgians in his 2014 campaign ad “The Outsider.” The Washington Post even credited the ad with winning Perdue his seat. In 2020, Perdue wore his campaign-winning jacket again—but was defeated by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff.

Notably, Collins didn’t actually summon up any folksy charm—a computer did it for him.

Collins recently launched his campaign to “take back control” of one of Georgia’s Senate seats from Ossoff with a video that misspelled the name of his own state.

NPR has obtained police bodycam footage of Trump Justice Department official Jared Wise calling on January 6 rioters to kill police officers.

“You guys are disgusting, man. You guys are disgusting,” Wise can be seen and heard saying on the footage. “I’m former law enforcement, you’re disgusting. You are the Nazi, you are the Gestapo, you can’t see it, cuz you’re chasing your pension.”

“Yeah! Fuck them, yeah! Kill ’em, yeah!” he later cheers as rioters push their way forward.

Wise’s incendiary statements, which he admitted to under oath in January, first made headlines in July after he was appointed senior counselor to Ed Martin, who was working to help January 6 rioters fight against “improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions.”

Wise defended his speech as a heat of the moment action influenced by what he saw as “police brutality” on the part of the Capitol officers.

“Those are terrible things to say. Of course. I shouldn’t say those things,” he said in court. “I think I was careless and used, like, terrible words when I was angry.”

Wise worked for the FBI from 2004 to 2017 before moving on to the far-right propaganda machine Project Veritas, where he infiltrated teachers’ unions across the Midwest. Wise was charged with two felonies and four misdemeanor counts in 2023, including trespassing and disrupting the orderly conduct of government, for his actions on January 6. All of his charges (and the charges of hundreds of other rioters) were dropped by Trump.

Wise’s pardoning and senior appointment show that Trump truly sees no wrong in what happened on January 6, and he won’t even pretend to. Rather than display any level of accountability, he rewards and uplifts those, like Wise, who called for violence against police and against the country in his name.

President Donald Trump announced his plan to conduct a new U.S. census that excludes undocumented immigrants on Thursday.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

“People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he continued.

The census is counted every 10 years and is the gold standard for population tallying. It’s used to determine how many House seats each state has and allocate federal funding. The census counts everyone living in the U.S., including “foreign-born” residents like naturalized citizens, people with green cards, undocumented immigrants, refugees, and students here on visas. 

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer with the American Immigration Council, called Trump’s proposal  “wildly unconstitutional.”

“The Constitution makes clear that all people must be counted. Not all citizens. People,” he wrote. 

Trump has attempted to alter the census before: In his first term, he tried to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census and was blocked by the Supreme Court. 

The president’s hope to conduct the census sooner also aligns with his gerrymandering scheme, as redistricting is only meant to take place once every decade, after the census is completed.