‘Morning Joe’: Trump Probably Won’t Impose Mexico Tariffs, Doesn’t Understand How Politics Works

The Morning Joe panellists were unimpressed by President Donald Trump’s upcoming tariffs on Mexico, which he says are designed to curb immigration into the United States. Though hosts Scarborough and Brzezinski were both off, the guests offered strong criticisms of the President.

Journalist Sam Stein doubted whether Trump would impose the tariffs at all.

“It doesn’t even matter if anything happens,” Stein said. “He’ll just manufacture something that Mexico said in a private phone conversation to say, ‘You know what? They gave in and they’re doing X, Y, Z therefore I don’t need to put tariffs in place’. It’s hard to get really passionate and worked up about something that seems pretty clear, not pretty clear but somewhat clear.”

Academic Tom Nichols criticized the President for not understanding the situation and talked about how Republican opposition to tariffs proved Trump didn’t know what he was doing politically.

“We talk about who — it’s going to cost Mexico, it’s going to cost the car makers,” Nichols said. “No. It’s going to cost consumers. Tariffs are a tax. Ted Cruz knows it. I sound like Bob Dole. Ted Cruz knows it, the President knows it.”

“The bigger problem here is, imagine the situation we’re in, where the Republican conference is now saying, ‘We really want to stop the President from doing the thing he ran on’, right? In theory, this is what he promised his voters he would do and when he was running for President and said I’m going to start trade wars.”

Stein said that tariffs could cause ‘economic devastation’ in Mexico and actually increase the immigration problem. Nichols agreed.

“He has a very personalized view of politics,” Nichols said. “If I can make things hurt, the guy I’m dealing with will give in. And politics, you know, it shows you that two and a half years in, the President doesn’t understand how politics works.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.