‘Never Gonna Happen’: Fox Panel Shoots Down Trump’s Wild Claims On Tariff Revenue

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked a panel of guests on Wednesday to weigh in on President Donald Trump’s claim the day before that he could do away with income tax.

MacCallum began the discussion, noting, “Trump said that you won’t have to pay taxes in the not-too-distant future. Steve, you won’t have to pay income tax because the money we’re taking in is so great—it’s enormous. He’s referring to the tariffs. Your reaction to that.”

Publisher and economist Steve Forbes replied, “That sounds nice, and then you look at the numbers. Federal income tax receipts are about two and a half trillion dollars. Tariff receipts are about three or four hundred billion dollars.”

MacCallum replied, “Let’s take a look at those numbers on the board. We have those. Okay.”

Forbes continued, “So you got a two-trillion-dollar gap. Moreover, forty percent of households don’t pay federal income tax. So if they get hit with a fifty, sixty, seventy percent tariff, what are you gonna do for them? So they got a lot of work to do on it.”

MacCallum agreed and added, “Indeed. So there’s a big gap, Marcus, but President Trump says—and he always looks to Scott Bessent in this moment and says, “How many trillions are we gonna have coming in?”—’cause he knows these numbers and he wants to prove that this is doable. What do you say to this?”

CNBC pundit and businessman Marcus Lemonis replied, “I don’t know if he really believes that it’s doable. I think the ideology of lessening people’s taxes is one thing. Steve mentioned the two point two, two point five trillion dollars of receipts. There’s no source of revenue that’s gonna replace that. And we look at the deficit we’re already in today—two point two isn’t even enough. So I think that President Trump is acknowledging the affordability, even though he doesn’t want to use that word. Seventy-six percent of people think it’s a word. How are we gonna fill the gap? I think we just need to simplify everything, as opposed to making it more complicated. This idea that you started the show with—that there’s gonna be a dividend—that’s never gonna happen.”

MacCallum followed up, “You don’t think that people will get two thousand dollars in the tariff dividend?”

“Where’s the money coming from?” Lemonis replied.

MacCallum pressed back, “It’s coming from everything that they have presented to us about these tariff deals, and that we got such a raw deal over the last several decades. He pointed specifically to South Korea and Japan. A lot of our—he said, ‘I don’t want to mention our allies,’ and then he started naming these countries.”

Lemonis pivoted and answered, “I think you’re gonna have consumers more focused on, ‘How are you gonna lower my housing costs? How are you gonna lower my food prices?’ I appreciate that you wanna give me money back, but if you could just lower things, that’d be better.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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