'Gives up the game': Trump administration reportedly exposed flaw in tariff plan

The over-the-top reaction by the Donald Trump administration to a report that Amazon would show the increase in cost on goods affected by his tariffs effectively revealed that they know his trade war is grossly unpopular.

On Tuesday there was a back-and-forth squabble between the administration and Amazon before the company backed down, reportedly after Trump made a call to billionaire founder Jeff Bezos.

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the panel laughed at comments made by White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt that the popular shopping website was engaging in a "hostile and political act by Amazon," which co-host Willie Geist jokingly characterized as being a "bunch of left-wing commies."

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That led MSNBC regular Richard Haas to laugh and add, "Yes, it is capitalism, which I usually associate with the west. This was, as one Wall Street firm calls it, radical transparency and the White House probably could have pushed back and said, 'Well, they're listing the immediate costs, they're not talking about the long-term benefits.' But I thought it was really interesting."

Co-host Jonathan Lemire interjected, "We know that Bezos has really cozied up to him in the last handful of months; was there for the inauguration and... even after the first term, drew Trump's ire quite often because of his stewardship of the Washington Post that is no longer the case."

Turning to conservative guest David French, he noted, "Talk to us about that phenomenon but also just the fact that the White House got so upset about this. It gives up the game here. They know that these tariffs are going to hurt American consumers and be really unpopular and they don't want that in-your-face reminder of that."

"Yeah," French laughed. "They absolutely don't want that reminder. They want some sort of deniability with their base that price increases have anything to do with the tariffs and they want the base to think that price increases are going to be due to corporate greed."

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