President Donald Trump erupted at a reporter who challenged his second-term tariff moves, firing back, “I was fighting lunatics like you,” at a White House event. The clash came after Trump signed sweeping executive actions invoking a rarely used 1977 law to impose wide-ranging reciprocal tariffs, including 10%–41% across over 70 nations.
His rebuttal referenced the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining that in his first term, tariffs were sidelined while the U.S. tackled the global health crisis. Trump insisted that his administration had already collected "hundreds of billions" in tariffs from China, and blamed the press for underreporting the results. The executive actions are framed as protective moves for U.S. national security and economic strength.The moment highlights his combative stance on trade and media relations.
00:00...weighing in on the legal arguments, but you're weighing your decision to do that, your authority...
00:06...do things incorrectly and inappropriately to a president that was duly elected.
00:17Well, Mr. President, your tariffs policy goes into effect tomorrow.
00:21Yeah.
00:21As you know, a federal appellate court today heard moral arguments about whether or not you had the authority to unilaterally impose those tariffs,
00:29I'm not going to get you to weigh in on the legal arguments, but you're weighing your decision to do that, your authority to do that, based on a 1977 law that's never been invoked before.
00:42Why didn't you invoke...
00:43Well, we've been winning all along, just so you don't...
00:45I just want to ask you, why didn't you invoke this law in your first term?
00:48You could have taken in billions upon billions of dollars in your first term, but you waited until your second term.
00:54Yeah, because in my first term, I was fighting lunatics like you who were trying to do things incorrectly and inappropriately to a president that was duly elected.
01:04And we did do certain tariffs in the first term.
01:07If you look at China, China, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China.
01:11But when COVID came, the last thing I was going to do is tell France and Italy and Spain and a couple of other countries that we're going to hit you with tariffs.
01:20We had to fight the COVID situation when that came.
01:24But if you look at my first term, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs, but you people didn't cover it very well.
