Even Fox Admits Trump’s Economy Is in Shambles

Not even Fox Business can pretend like President Donald Trump isn’t wrecking the economy.

Fox Business anchors Lauren Simonetti and Stuart Varney reported Friday that a University of Michigan survey found that an index of consumer sentiment had sunk even further since mid-December.

There had been a “surprise drop” in consumer sentiment to 52.9 percent confidence in the economy, Simonetti said. That’s down from 53.3 percent just slightly earlier this month, CNBC reported separately.

“Consumers are just worried about the price of things and long-run inflation expectations as well,” Simonetti added.

“But with rather these dull numbers, the market seems to like it. Perhaps implying that we’ll get more Fed rate cuts,” Varney noted.

“The weakness, I think, is attractive. Bad news is actually good news for the market, maybe.”

While it may be good for the market in the short term, consumer confidence is an accurate means of understanding the current economic situation and consumers’ willingness to spend, borrow, or invest. It can take several months before low consumer confidence is fully realized.

In December 2024, before Trump ever imposed his slate of disastrous economic policies, such as tariff wars and mass deportations, Michigan’s consumer sentiment index had been 74 percent, indicating a nearly 30 percent plummet year over year.

And it gets worse.

The survey’s rating of the “current economic conditions” was only 50.4 percent, down from 51.1 in November. CNBC reported that this was “a new all-time low” for the study going all the way back to the 1970s. In December, the rating had been 75.1, showing a nearly 33 percent drop year over year.

A livestream of a bearded man who goes by “Real Matt Money” inexplicably took over the White House home page on Thursday night, leading the public to ask if the page had been hacked or if the Trump administration was getting financial advice from a self-described “shepherd for individual investors.”

As Bloomberg reported, the livestream appeared and disappeared on the White House website in about an hour.

Real Money Matt seemed to be just as surprised as the rest of us.

“If I had known I would be live for the WORLD to see, I likely would have had a different message than personal finance,” he wrote Friday on X. “Let me meet the @POTUS.”

While Matt took it in stride, the randomness of his live appearance on the White House website does lend itself to questions regarding just how serious the Trump administration is about security, especially since it brought us the Signalgate scandal just one month in.

The White House has yet to publicly comment.

The more details that emerge about Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, the clearer it is that the two shared a wildly unconventional—and creepy—relationship.

Hours after The New York Times reported Thursday that Epstein and Trump bonded over “trophy hunting,” investigative reporter Nicholas Confessore told MS NOW that Epstein frequently allowed his friends and associates to listen in on private phone calls where he and Trump shared details of their “sexual conquests.”

“So we spoke to several former assistants and employees of Jeffrey Epstein’s,” Confessore said. “And he had a habit of putting Donald Trump and other famous friends on the phone. It was partly a power play and partly a way that he groomed people. ‘See how powerful I am. I can put this person on the phone. I can get them on the phone, I can put them on speaker. We’re friends. That’s how powerful I am.’

“It was a way that he groomed people and he would put Donald Trump on the phone. They would talk about sex,” he added.

Trump has vehemently denied this year that he had any sort of meaningful connection to the deceased child sex trafficker, but that wasn’t always the case. Over the last couple of decades, Trump has switched his tune on Epstein several times. In 2002, Trump told New York magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy.” He wrote a repugnant and allusory letter to Epstein for the sex trafficker’s 50th birthday. They were spotted socializing together, with young women many times, and even ended up living in the same Florida neighborhood.

But since ascending to the forefront of American power, Trump has claimed that he had “no relationship” with Epstein, pitching—despite troves of evidence to the contrary—that he was “not a fan of his.”

People around the pair of socialites, however, were under the impression that Epstein and Trump were each other’s closest friends, and Epstein reportedly believed it too.

“I think that Jeffrey Epstein thought he was Donald Trump’s closest friend for a period,” Confessore said. “They spent a lot of time talking on the phone about women and sexual conquests. They spent time at Trump Tower or over at Jeffrey Epstein’s offices nearby on Madison Avenue. They flew on each other’s planes, and they partied together a lot. And a lot of parties with women, people who are younger than they are.”

The phone calls were an instance of Epstein using Trump, wielding the real estate magnate’s name to advance his own social standing and access, according to Confessore.

Trump has not been charged with any crimes related to Epstein or his longtime associate and sex-trafficking partner, Ghislaine Maxwell.

But the country is on the precipice of knowing just about everything there is to know about the pair’s scandalous relationship. The administration is preparing to release the totality of the Epstein files Friday, as required by a law passed by Congress last month.

So far, the administration has already attempted to waylay public expectations that the files will be exposed to the full breadth of the document load, with FBI Director Kash Patel claiming that his agency is doing everything it can to release the portions of the files that are “lawful,” despite the fact that Congress mandated their entire release.

A Wisconsin judge has been convicted of obstructing federal government proceedings by allowing an immigrant man to exit her courtroom through a side door.

Judge Hannah Dugan was acquitted Thursday night of a lesser charge of obstructing an arrest, but she still faces up to five years in prison. Having now been convicted of a felony, she is likely ineligible to continue serving from the bench. The judge’s lawyers have vowed to appeal the ruling.  

Witnesses testified that Dugan sent away several plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who came to the Milwaukee County Courthouse to detain Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. She then told Flores-Ruiz’s lawyer that she would reschedule his hearing and directed them to exit her courtroom through a door typically used by the jury. 

In an audio recording played in court, Dugan could be heard conferring with the court reporter. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll get the heat.”

Flores-Ruiz then used a public courthouse hallway, walked past a couple of DEA agents, got into an elevator, and exited the building before ICE officers could stop him.

Dugan’s lawyers had cited Trump v. United States in arguing that their client had judicial immunity for official acts and broad authority over her own courtroom. 

The ruling is a victory for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which seeks to paint judges who don’t greenlight his immigration crackdown as “deranged” rogue actors.

Protests and event messages about ICE could now be grounds for domestic terrorism investigations by the FBI.

The Guardian reports that the bureau has launched cases in 23 regions across the U.S. related to “threats against immigration enforcement activity.” The investigations fit into the new NSPM-7 national security strategy targeting supposed anti-American activity on the left. That document referred to protests against ICE in Los Angeles and Portland as examples of “political violence.”

The investigations were laid out in an internal report drafted by the FBI in November and shared with other law enforcement agencies. The report mentions that using encrypted messaging apps to discuss ICE was considered an indicator of whether a person would engage in terrorism, as well as “stockpiling or distributing firearms” but also “conducting online research” about agents.

The document has alarmed privacy advocates and civil rights groups, who said that it confirmed their fears that the NSPM-7 document would be used to crack down on dissent. In over 30 states, the FBI has opened cases related to anti-ICE activity or NSPM-7, a map in the document shows.

“[The FBI document] is infused with vague and overbroad language, which was exactly our concern about NSPM-7 in the first place. It invites law enforcement suspicion and investigation based on purely first amendment-protected beliefs and activities,” Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, told The Guardian. “People who are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing can be subjected to surveillance or investigation. That imposes stigma. It can wrongly [enmesh] people in the criminal legal system.”

Coupled with its declaration that antifa, or anti-fascism, is a terrorist organization, these actions by the Trump administration seek to clamp down on any protests or dissent against its policies. It’s not far-fetched to imagine federal law enforcement cracking down on President Trump’s political opposition, using these documents to justify its actions, all in the name of fighting terrorism.