John Kennedy had to make a choice.
Trump and his supporters are going to hate the decision.
And John Kennedy sided with CNN in this fight against Donald Trump.
As Great American Digest reports:
Louisiana Senator John Kennedy is clearly uneasy with President Trump’s tariffs.
Kennedy previously said of President Trump’s global tariffs that “we’re in uncharted waters. We’re in the economic unknown.”
Kennedy hails from the pre-Trump Republican Party that was unabashedly free trade.
But international trade deals and allowing Communist China into the World Trade Organization strip mined the American manufacturing base and decimated working-class communities across America.
Republicans like Kennedy are trying to walk a tight rope because they know free trade is unpopular inside the GOP, but they don’t want to publicly pick a fight with President Trump.
That leads to interviews like the one Kennedy gave to Jake Tapper on CNN where Kennedy went right up to the line of directly criticizing President Trump.
Tapper asked Kennedy about what he hears from Republicans about President Trump needing to do a better job of explaining his tariffs to the American people.
“I have heard from Republicans on this show and others saying that they didn’t think President Trump – as great as a communicator as they think he is normally – fully explain what he is trying to do with these tariffs,” Tapper asked Kennedy. “What do you think?”
Kennedy agreed that President Trump hasn’t defended his tariff policy clearly enough to the public.
But Kennedy said he didn’t know why Trump and his allies offered up multiple justifications for the tariffs such as they are a negotiating tool and that they are intended to facilitate the reshoring of American jobs.
“I see what you see,” Kennedy replied. “I think I know what’s in the president’s heart, but I don’t know what’s in his head. The people you’re talking about are right. The administration has not given one clear rationale for its tariffs. I think that’s intentional. I don’t know, but my guess is, it’s intentional. And that it’s part of the president’s negotiating strategy, but Jake, I don’t want to feign understanding. I don’t know.”
Kennedy said in trade and tariffs that Trump believes now is the time to go big to induce a fundamental restructuring of the global economy that Trump believes didn’t accrue to the benefit of American workers.
“The president believes if you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly. Like him or dislike him, agree or disagree – right now, he’s being a grizzly,” Kennedy concluded.
But what Kennedy didn’t say was that he supported President Trump “being a grizzly” on trade.