Scarborough: Just so China knows, Donald is going o to put on like an 80% tariff.Trump: Don’t joke, Joe.Scarborough: Let me finish. You got to let me finish. You got to let me get to the second part of what I was going to say. For all you economics professors and people writing op-eds and freaking out, he’s negotiating. This entire campaign, look what he did to the
Republican Party. He battered them and abused them and they came whimpering to him like a beaten dog, begging him. It’s what he does. It’s called hard-nosed negotiating.
Scarborough seems to miss the point that as president, threats like the ones Trump is issuing now to China can have effects beyond making China either quake in its boots or laugh, such as destabilizing world financial markets. Presidents’ words alone have power.
It’s a point that was also lost on co-host Mika Brzezinski, who picked the wrong thing to be disturbed by regarding Trump’s tweet jumping the gun in calling the missing Egyptian airliner a terror attack:
While Trump’s focus on hate and fear is a problem, it’s not the main problem with this tweet, which is once again an indication that a President Trump would react rashly and prematurely, without a thought to the consequences even of his words. For someone who campaigns on the claim that he opposed the Iraq War, Trump seems to not only be unconcerned with getting way out ahead of the facts, but to view it as a strength.