CNN's resident Donald Trump supporter Scott Jennings went out of his way to mock the smaller countries on the receiving end of the president's tariffs, as Trump announced yet another delay in full implementation.
"Today, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked if there's any concern that world leaders will not take these new tariff threats seriously because deadlines keep shifting," said anchor Jake Tapper. "I mean, there was this '90 deals in 90 days' thing that is no longer fully operative. Not the 90 days part of it anyway. Here's what Leavitt had to say."
"They will take the letter seriously because they have taken the president seriously," said Leavitt in the clip. "And that's why the president's phone, I can tell you, rings off the hook from world leaders all the time who are begging him to come to a deal ... this delay, again, is in the best interest of the American people."
"I mean, he's the one that said 90 days in 90 days — it wasn't us in the media," said Tapper, looking at Jennings. "Your take?"
"Well, they have to take us seriously because for all these countries we're the most important thing they have going, and so they have to take it seriously," said Jennings, who has frequently triggered controversy for his full-throated defenses of Trump's most divisive decisions. "And I assume the president here is trying to goose conversations along, and I hope that he does. Some of these countries are basically irrelevant. You know, Kazakhstan, whatever. Some of them are more relevant. But—"
"You're going to you're going to hear from the Kazakhs on that, but go on," chuckled Tapper.
"I know. Very nice!" said Jennings, putting on an impression of the fictional Kazakh character Borat. "But look, the president has a theory on the tariffs here has brought in money into the country. It did create leverage for some other trade deals. And if you look at the totality of what's happened over the last several weeks and several months, the market's up, we've got a lot of investment flowing into the country ... which is a big part of why I think the president's had a fairly successful six months."
Markets have improved since cratering when Trump's tariffs were first announced, but the Dow Jones is still not quite back to its all-time high in December.
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