Let's All Watch Liz Warren Tariffsplain To Inattentive Dunderhead On CNBC
Ma'am, you need to use your listening skills.
Professor Senator Elizabeth Warren stopped by CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday for some chattin’ and some rantin’ and some tarriffsplainin’ for the benefit of the show’s blow-dried hosts. We don’t normally watch financial news shows, because what are we, the Vanderbilts? But put Warren on anytime, and we’ll consider tuning in more. She can be entertaining!
Especially if your anchor isn’t following her argument, which sends her into her professorial did-you-not-do-the-reading voice. Which is what happened to Sara Eisen, who must have thought for one moment that she was back at the Medill School and had skipped that week’s assignment.
Aaron Rupar captured a clip here of the moment where Warren shows a lot more patience than we would have:
EISEN: It ultimately doesn’t matter.
WARREN: What do you mean, it ultimately doesn’t matter? This is the law. It’s Constitution 101.
EISEN: He has the authority [to impose tariffs], ultimately.
WARREN: Well, no, he does not, that’s the whole point. He does not have this authority if Congress does not let him keep this authority.
To understand why this was a particularly silly moment, you have to go back to before that clip starts. At about 9:24 in the full interview, one of Eisen’s co-hosts, David Faber, notes that the only reason Trump was able to legally slap on these tariffs is because he signed a declaration declaring an “emergency” in our trade regime with the world’s nations.
The emergency, in Trump's pea brain, is that we have trade deficits with a lot of countries. To anyone with a functional amygdala, this is called “commerce.” To Trump, it’s called "ZOMG FOREIGNERS ARE RIPPING US OFF AND STEALING OUR MANUFACTURING JERBS AND WE’RE GOING TO STOP IT SO AMERICANS CAN BE THE ONES LABORING IN FACTORIES SEWING ALL THOSE OUTFITS FOR BRATZ DOLLS.”
Faber asked Warren how Congress can end this emergency and restore the constitutional balance, in which tariff policies come from the legislative branch. Warren spends a solid minute or two explaining that the statute Trump used for the emergency declaration also gives Congress the power to say there’s not in fact an emergency. If Congress can pass a law terminating the emergency, the tariffs are off.
Now admittedly, this would be difficult, given that Democrats and the Republicans who like “money” would need two-thirds of the vote to override Trump’s veto. And Trump would surely veto this bill, probably while Stephen Miller and Russ Vought are standing over him and cackling.
So, despite Warren’s ever-present optimism that some Republicans might want to cross the aisle on this one, it would take a miracle.
Though Warren was talking about this on Good Friday, which we are led to understand is the start of a weekend when people who were unfamiliar with the practice of grave-robbing think a miracle happened 2,000 years ago, so what the heck, might as well ask.
But, Warren says, they are going to have the vote in about two weeks. She and Sen. Ron Wyden have already introduced the legislation as a privileged motion. If they can get four Republicans to cross the aisle, as they did on an earlier vote regarding tariffs on Canada, they have sent a message to Trump.
Which is when Eisen says that such a vote doesn’t matter because Trump has the ultimate authority over tariffs, and Warren corrects her with a level of patience that for us, not being a former law professor who spent years lecturing about this stuff, would be impossible.
We don’t know. Maybe Eisen was thinking about whether it was early enough to start drinking and missed Warren’s entire spiel. To which we say, you work with Jim Cramer, no time is too early to start drinking.
The anchors also asked Warren about Trump’s attacks on Harvard, which include yanking grants for scientific studies and possibly ending the university’s tax-exempt status because, in Trump’s mind, the school is made up of all Democrats who hate him, making it a “political entity.” Which is when Eisen revealed a bit more of her “thinking”:
“Then how should they be held accountable for failing to protect civil rights of Jewish students? [...] There’s ample evidence that a lot of the faculty they employ are progressive, and it’s increasingly political.”
Warren responds by saying, in essence, if that’s the case, then go to court and present some evidence. But Harvard’s tax status doesn’t get changed because America has a king who can “wave his magic wand around” and decree it so.
If having a faculty that leans mostly left is reason enough to revoke a university’s tax-exempt status, we have some bad news for Eisen: A lot of schools could find their tax status changing. Which would probably be a financial death sentence for schools that are already getting hit with research cuts from the Trump administration, on top of all the other financial pressure on modern-day colleges.
On second thought, maybe we won’t watch more financial news. Our sanity is already stretched far enough.
[CNBC]
I haven't the foggiest idea who TF Sara Eisen is, but a) she sounds like a MAGA, b) she doesn't know her Constitution, and c) she ought to learn not to debate with Senator Warren
I've been watching CNBC a lot recently, and most of their talking heads are not buying what PAB is selling. Although they are repubs, they do have some working knowledge of how things work, but Sara Eisen was painfully oblivious to reality and totally unprepared. Elizabeth Warren treated her like someone who had accidentally wandered into her class and had the audacity to say stupid shit out loud.