There’s been considerable buzz about tariffs and their effects since President Donald Trump announced "Liberation Day" last week. Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have been all too happy to gin up panic about potential consequences, and sure enough, tariffs were a major topic of the most recent Sunday shows. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) who just days before had given an approximately 25 hour speech from the Senate floor, was a guest on ABC News' "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," and both topics no doubt came up from the start.
After he had lauded Booker for his record-breaking speech, Stephanopoulos moved right on to asking about the senator's take on tariffs.
Referencing White House Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett's comments earlier in the program, about how he acknowledged prices might go up do to tariffs, but that it would be worth it, Stephanopoulos asked for Booker's response.
"God bless, Kevin, but I've never seen an administration in my lifetime do something so monumentally wrong and that so staggeringly hurts American people," the senator, who will turn 56 later this month, said in response. "I've been hearing all day yesterday, from frightened Americans who've saved for their entire lives, for retirement in the coming months, but now know they can't because in one fell swoop, Donald Trump has devastated their retirement accounts, their 401(k)s."
Although this wasn't even his full answer, that alone is quite something. Booker was alive and in office during the four years of the Biden-Harris administration, which just came to a merciful end less than three months ago. Although the full effects of tariffs under Trump remain to be seen, it's undeniable that the previous administration hurt the American people terribly, including and especially on economy and the inflation, and then proceeded to gaslight terribly.
While Trump certainly has room to grow on his approval ratings on the economy and inflation, it was particularly a tough issue for President Joe Biden, and rightfully so. According to RealClearPolling, he finished with a net -20.7 on the economy, and a net -29.0 on inflation.
Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary for the Biden administration, infamously promised that "inflation is transitory," remarks she of course had to walk back.
As Biden's first press secretary, Jen Psaki also gaslit the American people when it came to the inflation that resulted from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which Biden signed into law in March 2021 without any Republican votes. Even Democrats, like former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers who served under the Clinton administration, earned her mockery.
Even though this conversation might not otherwise normally entail immigration, Booker opened it up for that when he mentioned something as far-reaching as how the administration did "something so monumentally wrong and that so staggeringly hurts American people."
After particularly low encounters at the southern border during Trump's first term, we saw open borders during the Biden-Harris administration, with then Vice President Kamala Harris doing a pitiful job as the "border czar," as just one of the useless tasks Biden gave her.
There was also a so-called border bill introduced in February of last year, which was so bad and would do nothing to fix the problem, it was quickly killed. That didn't stop then Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) from bringing it up for a vote, though. He even did so twice. Still, Democrats falsely claimed as a desperate campaign strategy that they were the ones trying to fix the crisis at the border they had created, and that Republicans were the problem.
That narrative clearly didn't work. Immigration was a top issue, if not the top issue in the polls for the 2024 election, and whether Trump was running against Biden or Harris, he handily led on the issue. Although immigration has dropped in level of importance, it's because we're seeing record low encounters at the border, after we saw a record high under the Biden-Harris administration in December 2023, before the month was even over.
While RealClearPolling had Biden finish with a net -31.3 on immigration, Trump is doing quite comfortably on this issue. He has a net +6.2 on immigration, and polls continue to show that Americans approve of his deportation plans.
Trump is currently at about even in the polls, though Biden finished his term with particularly poor numbers and Americans believe he'll be remembered in a negative light. Within his first year, he saw a particularly sharp drop in support, something Marc Thiessen highlighted for Fox News around that time, as we covered.
But again, that wasn't even Booker's full response. "I know millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck who already, in their administration, have seen rising prices, even though he promised they would go down, rising inflation, even though he promised it would go down, and now they're bracing themselves for seeing their monthly bills go up because of what this president did. And that will devastate them," he continued, which could also speak to the problems that Biden created and Trump now has to clean up when it comes to his successor and predecessor.
After ranting about "Trump tax cuts" with claims that they benefit "the wealthiest of Americans," and even more false claims with how the Trump administration is going to be "savaging Medicaid," Booker claimed that "that is scary." It is, because he and fellow Democrats keep spreading lies and fearmongering. Booker continued even further with that narrative, though, by bringing up concerns from a Saturday town hall involving "parents of disabled children, where parents... are taking care of their elders," as he warned they're concerned that cuts in services "will send their families into chaos," once more bringing it back to his claims about tax cuts to the wealthy.
Not only is it worth mentioning that Trump has been talking about tariffs for years, as Hassett reminded during the program and Trump himself did last Tuesday, it's also worth pointing out that the Trump White House has spoken about tariffs as being part of Trump's plans for tax cuts.
"So, the chaos he has unleashed on America, the financial insecurity that he has brought to people's lives, this is not what he promised people. And I think he will already go down for a president having the worst first 100 days in the last century of any president that's ever taken that office," Booker went on to hyperbolically claim as he finished that response.
In typical fashion, Stephanopoulos didn't press Booker on any of those points. Instead the conversation moved onto discussing Trump and supposed "retribution," as if what the particularly weaponized and politicized Department of Justice under the Biden-Harris administration didn't do just that in all of the criminal cases against Trump as the former president and then Biden's top political opponent.
“I've never seen an administration in my lifetime do something so monumentally wrong and that so staggeringly hurts American people.”
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 6, 2025
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker slams Pres. Trump’s tariffs plan and “the chaos he has unleashed on America.” https://t.co/WolGuJe147 pic.twitter.com/C2ZbT6kJUU
