'What's he talking about?' MSNBC panel stumped by Trump boast

Noting that Donald Trump appears to have retreated from talking about his unpopular trade plans, the panel on MSNBC's "The Weekend" were baffled by his one high-profile mention of negotiations with China on tariffs.

On Sunday morning the hosts and their guests were hard pressed to recall any trade deals the Trump administration has successfully brought to closure, with contributor Molly Jong-Fast joking, "I was promised 90 deals in 90- days."

That led co-host Elise Jordan to point to a Trump pronouncement on potential deals on Thursday where he vaguely rambled "We just signed with China. We have everybody. We're not going to make deals with everybody, some were just going to send them a letter, say thank you very much, you're going to pay 25, 35, 45 percent. We have one coming up, maybe with India –– very big one. We're going to open up India in the China deal. We're starting to open up China."

That led co-host Jonathan Capehart to exclaim, "Make it make sense. What's he talking about?"

Conservative Brendan Buck laughed and observed, "Okay, I worked on trade policy when I was in Congress. Look, trade deals are not just 'What's your tariff rate?' There's a reason that trade deals usually take a year, two years, sometimes like five years to negotiate because you're going literally line by line, product by product, 'What is the rate on this? What is our quota on that?'"

"Each one is a negotiation," he added. "He's just talking these big broad terms of like how much we're going to pay and he seems to think that us slapping a tariff on somebody is good for us in some way. We have this sort of quasi-deal with China. He's celebrating that we are going to have a higher tariff than they are. That just means we're paying more. And so there's a reason none of these things have come to fruition, because, I don't know, it's like, he doesn't appreciate what an actual trade agreement is."

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