'Zero answers': MSNBC's Mika left puzzled by 'incredible' Karoline Leavitt question time
The White House is going after Amazon after the online retailer announced it would show consumers how much tariffs would add to the cost of individual items, and panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" reacted in real time to the administration's threats.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed the move Tuesday morning as a "hostile and political act by Amazon," but host Joe Scarborough said President Donald Trump's trade war would increase the costs for many goods and products, just as economists have been warning for years.
"Their anger is going to be directed at Amazon, at Walmart, at Costco, at Target, you just go down the list," Scarborough said. "So I understand the White House has been very effective and scaring some of these guys, but it's one thing having political pushback. It's quite another having it from the very people who decide whether your business succeeds or fails."
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declined to comment at the news conference with Leavitt on whether Trump had spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the tariffs, and co-host Mika Brzezinski wondered what the point of calling reporters to the White House had been.
"That was an incredible news conference with just almost zero answers, actually, to the questions that were asked," she said. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, had cozied up to Trump during his campaign and joined him on Inauguration Day, but CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin speculated the online retailer would back down on the tariff move.
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"I don't disagree with you, I just think that this administration has managed to scare so many businesses into silence," Sorkin said. "We've seen it over and over again. I actually mentioned it yesterday to somebody. I had a CEO tell me, 'I don't want to be harvested,' that was the phrase, 'I don't want to be harvested,' which means, basically, 'I don't want to have to get in a lawsuit with them and then coming after me in some other way,' and I think that that is what worries CEOs today. So do I think that Amazon may look at this and say to themselves, 'Okay, maybe I'm going to try to get the word out in a different way, I'm not going to poster it on each thing.'"
"I don't know how this is all going to play out, but I do think that this administration has scared the CEOs," Sorkin added. "So, you know, so much that they are worried about either being regulated in some way that they don't know about all of these businesses, whether it's Walmart or Amazon or whomever, have massive relationships or or rely on the government not for funding, but for allowing them to do all sorts of things. You know, Amazon just put Kuiper, which are these new satellites, into the sky in the past 24 hours? That's a very, very big deal. They're going to want to be able to continue to do that.
'There's all sorts of things like that where they need the permission, effectively, of the government, and if the government tries to block them on anything, the question is what's the risk reward as it relates to showing these prices? I would think the transparency should win, but as you know, I think we've seen that unfortunately, in this day and age, transparency is all too often getting lost."
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