'He's going to hate this': Ex-aide predicts mockery will unravel Trump wins

President Donald Trump finally got an "off-ramp" from his deeply unpopular trade wars, said one of his former White House aides, but the sudden popularity of a mocking nickname might compel him to double down.

The president has been announcing punishing tariffs against China and other U.S. trade partners, sending markets into a tailspin and forcing him to back off, and Wall Street traders have been banking on his predictably lurching economic policy with what they call "TACO" trades – meaning "Trump Always Chickens Out" – and former White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin told "CNN News Central" the acronym might backfire.

"There's certainly a lot of uncertainty right now," said CNN's John Berman. "Alyssa, I'm really curious because you've been there in this White House or in the White House with this president before. He's caught in between some different waves here. I mean, he has good political sense, and he knows that he's benefited politically in the last few weeks [by] backing off the tariffs a little bit, but he hates being ridiculed, and you have people now talking about 'TACO' trades – Trump always chickens out with these tariffs – and then you have his willingness and desire to fight the judges. I wonder where you think this might be headed for him."

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Griffin agreed the ridicule from Wall Street could back the president into a self-destructive position.

"Trump was handed three huge political wins this week, if he can accept them and just take the win," she said. "The first, Elon Musk leaving – somebody whose approval rating is 37 percent, people do not like the DOGE cuts. They think that they're reckless. They're all for cutting waste, fraud and abuse, but they felt like they didn't know what he was cutting. That's a win for this White House."

"Secondly, this ruling from the courts, these tariffs have been disastrous," Griffin added. "People are already feeling the impact of them, and this is the graceful off-ramp that I think some around the president were trying to, were kind of hoping was going to happen, because his entire legislative agenda and economic agenda is going to be dragged down if these tariffs stay in place as they were."

But the president's reaction to being asked what he called a "nasty question" about his penchant for backing off his threats suggests he might not take the political win and move on, Griffin said.

"'TACO,' he's going to hate this," she said. "We all know it, we saw how he reacted to the reporter's question. But that is huge that Wall Street traders have actually learned how to sort of call Trump's bluff, so he's not able to cause this sort of market volatility that we saw in the first few months. Those are all good things in the long run for Donald Trump's economy and for his future agenda. But all of them look like losses, but actually are wins, if he can simply take the win."

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