According to conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, President Donald Trump's long history of nonsensical tweets may have hit rock bottom with a recent Twitter claim lauding the genius of economy-killing tariffs.
On Wednesday, the commander in chief who has disrupted the U.S. economy by demanding tariffs on products coming from countries that have slighted him tweeted: "Our Country was built on Tariffs, and Tariffs are now leading us to great new Trade Deals - as opposed to the horrible and unfair Trade Deals that I inherited as your President. Other Countries should not be allowed to come in and steal the wealth of our great U.S.A. No longer!"
In a column for the Post published Thursday morning, an exasperated Rubin responded, "No, no, no."
"Our country was founded on a principle Trump often seems unacquainted with: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," she began.
She continued, "Unless Trump wants to retreat to a 1776-sized economy or relive the Great Depression (care of Smoot-Hawley) it’s best we not follow the outdated mercantilist philosophy that was supplanted fortunately by Adam Smith who deplored tariffs ('extraordinary restraints upon the importation of almost all sorts of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous')."
Pointing out that "Trump’s zero-sum economics is wrong," Rubin drew attention to thousands of Americans who are suddenly losing their jobs as companies cut back because they can't sell their products overseas because of the trade war started by the president.
Then she went in for the kill.
"It turns out a deliberately ignorant president is a menace to our democracy and economy (who knew?!). The staffers who rationalize his nonsensical pronouncements and the right-wing media that praise him are enabling a destructive president, who, if allowed to succeed, would make us less free and less prosperous," she wrote, before bluntly concluding, "Listening to him certainly makes our politics dumber."
You can read her whole column here.