‘He Means What He Says’: Kevin Hassett Spins Trump Tariff Flip-Flop to Fox & Friends

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appeared on Fox & Friends Thursday morning and admitted that President Donald Trump’s stunning reversal on his controversial tariff policy was a reaction to fears of a collapsing US Treasury Bond market, as Fox Business Analyst Charles Gasparino had reported.

But while that could easily be the headline of the 6-minute segment, it was Hassett’s bizarre spin on what seems a clear Trump cave to broad bipartisan pressure on his “Liberation Day” stunt — which created stocks and bond markets and devalued 401ks across the land — that stood out as evidence that even the most convivial and dispassionate members of the Trump administration are willing to shamelessly spin any news in a manner that appeals to Trump.

“I see that shortly after they paused, you went into the Oval Office with some other high-ranking officials and you talked about, among other things, the fact that one of the things that was freaking people out is there was a gigantic sell-off in the U.S. bond market,” Steve Doocy said as he opened up the interview. “And U. S. bonds, treasuries, have always been seen as the gold standard around world and if there are cracks in that, we’re all kind of screwed.”

“Well, as an economist, I can say that my judgment yesterday morning, as I was watching interest rates climb up quite a bit, that a lot of the people who normally buy U.S. treasuries were wondering whether the president was really serious about what he was saying when he was going to renegotiate better deals for the American people,” Hassett replied. “And I knew he was serious, and he knew he was serious. We had been working on plans for the negotiations for weeks, and even a couple of deals lined up that maybe were close to being announced.”

“And we’re getting ready to talk about, well, what’s the next stage? ‘What’s the step for the negotiations?'” he added. “I — even yesterday morning —was on a call with the president, with the Swiss president talking about a Swiss trade deal. And so the point is everything was moving, but then when the bond market started to say, ‘Hey, we don’t believe these guys,’ — I think the president decided on his own really, that, well, we’re gonna announce this anyway, we might as well do it today. There’s a little bit of an extra push for the bond market,” Hassett said, admitting the reversal was a reaction to a bond market sell-off, before curiously adding, “But this is the plan that he was pursuing all along.”

“Did you know this was part of his plan — that he was going to do that?’ Ainsely Earhardt asked.

“I knew that he had options that he was, that he wanted us to prepare in a very orderly fashion, unanimity between, you know, everybody from Peter Navarro to Howard Lutnick to Scott Bessent to me, and the Vice President,” Hassett replied. “He was also in on it. And the fact is that there were options for the president. That’s always what he likes to see. And then he had the options, and he was thinking about them.”

“And that he made, I think, the absolutely right, decisive call to go with really the bigger move rather than announce one or two trade deals, but go with bigger moves so that everybody in the world understands — that he means what he says, that he wants people to be fair to American workers,” Hassett added.

“He means what he says” is a hell of a way to describe the curious and all-over-the-place trade rhetoric that has emerged from Trump in the past 10 days or so. Yes, he has long promoted tariffs, but the on-again-off-again nature of reciprocal tariff polices, first towards Mexico and Canada, then with the rest of the world, is enough to make your head spin, or in this instance, threaten a global economy into a serious crash.

Doocy concluded by citing a Wall Street Journal report that Trump knew his tariff policy “could trigger a recession,” before adding: “His worry was that it would cause a depression. Did you know that the president was concerned with a depression?”

“I think that you have to think about what the scenarios were that we were playing out for the president,” Hasssett replied. “One scenario is that we come out with tariffs and non-tariff barriers that are at the level of our trading partners and they don’t respond. And in that scenario, it’s going to be pretty bad for the global economy. But the good news is that we’re making America great again with Trump policies, but we’re also rebuilding the global order. because the other countries that are coming to the table are more or less going to be adopting Trump at anti-globalist policies as well. And it’s gonna be great for their workers and it’s going to be great for our workers as well.”

Watch above via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.