CNN’s Jake Tapper Roasts Trump With Cutting Jab After Fact-Checker Torpedoes ‘Liberation Day’ Tariff Rant

CNN anchor Jake Tapper made a cutting quip to fact-checker Daniel Dale after a fact-check of President Donald Trump’s big “Make America Wealthy Again” tariff announcement.

Wednesday afternoon was the long-awaited (and dreaded, by some) “Liberation Day” as Trump rolled out his tariff program at a Rose Garden photo op billed as a “Make America Wealthy Again” event. The import taxes were much larger and more comprehensive than many expected, and even included some uninhabited islands.

On Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, minutes after Trump concluded his remarks, Tapper tossed to Dale for a fact-check. When Dale was finished, Tapper cracked “Other than that though —”:

TAPPER: CNN’s Daniel Dale, our fact checker, was closely listening to the president’s remark to check out and suss out the facts there. Daniel, what President Trump had to say about Canadian dairy tariffs, is that accurate?

DALE: It was not even close to accurate, Jake. So President Trump said Canada treats the first little carton of milk that the U.S. exports as a low tariff product. But then after that, Canada applies massive tariffs in excess of 200 percent.

It is not just the first little carton of milk that has low tariffs. In fact, under the USMCA deal that Trump himself negotiated, tens of thousands of metric tons per year of U.S. milk are treated as tariff free by Canada. That is guaranteed tariff free market access by Canada. And here’s the key thing, Jake, the U.S. is not exporting even close to that tariff free quota maximum. So none of those hefty Canadian tariffs above the quota level are actually being applied.

And that was just one of the false claims he made, Jake. He also offered what I think is some pretty brazen alternative history saying that the U.S. was at proportionately its wealthiest from 1789 to 1913. The U.S. is way wealthier today by any reasonable measure, including per capita income, living standards. And then he said that the U.S. would not have had the Great Depression had the U.S. stayed with tariffs. Well, there was a pretty infamous tariff in 1930, the Smoot- Hawley tariff that is widely seen to have contributed to worsening that Great Depression.

He also repeated his claim that the U.S. took in hundreds of billions of dollars that China paid because of tariffs he imposed in his first term. It is U.S. importers who made those tariff payments. Study after study has found that U.S. consumers and businesses ate the overwhelming majority of the costs of those tariffs. And so it is just not true that China was paying that money.

He also falsely said that the U.S. had the highest inflation in its history under President Biden. Yes, of course it was high, it was troubling, not even close to a record. And he said that gasoline is, quote, “way under $3 now.” It is true in some states, but the national average today according to AAA is about $3.24 per gallon, Jake.

TAPPER: Other than that though, any factual errors? I’m just joking. That was a lot.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.