PR Fallout of ‘Liberation Day’: Trump Is Now a Wartime President
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Who needs enemies with stalwart friends like this?

As stock markets tumble in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, Republicans in Congress were watching with unease and talking of clawing back their power to levy tariffs — but almost none seemed ready to turn their words into action.

The Republican president is upending longstanding GOP principles like support for free trade, yet despite clear misgivings and a Constitutional mandate to decide tariffs, most lawmakers were not ready to cross Trump. Instead, they were focusing all their attention on advancing the president’s ” big, beautiful bill ” of tax breaks and spending cuts, even as tariffs — in essence, import taxes — threatened to raise consumer prices across the board and push the global economy into a recession.

As the fallout from Trump’s announcement reverberated around global markets, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has made it clear he is no fan of tariffs, told reporters that he would give Trump “the benefit of the doubt” in hopes that the announcement was just a scare tactic to prod foreign leaders into negotiating better trade deals with the U.S.





Three whole days and the usual suspects, who can’t get off their collectives asterisks to do anything remotely useful besides cry into hankies and reach across the aisles to help Democrats blow their noses, are suddenly and miraculously jet-propelled into action to…*checks notes*…’reassert’ Congressional authority over tariffs.

In other words, shut Trump down.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, a senior Republican lawmaker from the farm-heavy state of Iowa, is spearheading new legislation that would reassert Congress’ authority over tariffs amid President Donald Trump’s trade war escalation.

The measure, jointly introduced Thursday with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), would limit the president’s power to impose tariffs. It would require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of such an imposition and for Congress to explicitly approve any new tariffs within 60 days. The bill also would allow Congress to end any tariff at any time.

It’s highly unlikely this proposal will ever become law. Still, support from Grassley — who chairs the Judiciary Committee, sits on the Finance Committee and is third in line for the presidency as the Senate’s president pro tempore — sends a strong signal about the GOP’s growing unease with Trump’s actions and the party’s willingness to say something about it.

It’s all the squish virtue-signaling establishment critter names you’d expect and precisely the reason why Republicans can’t ever have nice things.





…Grassley 

Moran 

Murkowski 

McConnell 

Tillis 

Young 

Collins

Trump says if such an abomination ever makes it to his desk, he’s going to veto it, but it shouldn’t be happening to begin with.

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is shaking his head at the ‘impatience’ he sees in the markets, and these senators doing the preemptive polka are making things worse. For crying out loud, it’s been three whole days, and two of them are on a weekend.

Get a frickin’ grip.

Bessent has been surprised by the “impatience” in the stock market since the tariff announcement, he told Fox News today. He sees the sweeping new import duties as the starting point for a negotiation which could last several months.

“Maybe almost 70” countries have reached out to the White House about negotiating tariffs, Bessent told Fox, including Japan, whose Prime Minister Ishiba spoke to Trump today.





Three days.

Grassley’s such a big ‘farm’ advocate. Maybe he should be talking to beef ranchers, too, before he tries to cut the knees out from under the president.

Maybe some of those squish senators should get out of their club once in a while.

And as Americans learn what the multinationals have been doing with Democrats’ full blessing? Yes, the party that insists the middle-class ‘pay their fair share,’ but boy, their favored donors get off easy.





It’s been three days, and the market even bounced back up a good way for a bit today. 

Sorry to disappoint the Democrats and progressives and RINOs today.

Yeah, it’s a ride, and, yeah, it hurts.

But dammit. All I can think is that they couldn’t even give him a week.

These senators are panicked already.

They gave Biden trillions but can’t give Trump a week.

It amazes me.





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