On The Daily Blast, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz explains how Trump’s tariff policies drive a wedge within MAGA media
Gertz: “You can get every flavor of that Trump coalition from watching Fox News—but, and this is the crucial aspect, they disagree on a lot of policy”
Published
On The Daily Blast, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz explains how Trump’s tariff policies drive a wedge within MAGA media
Citation
From the March 19, 2025, edition of The New Republic's The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent
GREG SARGENT (HOST): Let’s start by listening to what Fox host Maria Bartiromo said about the tariffs. She was interviewing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who talked about how we need tariffs because imported goods like foods aren’t adequately tested. Then this happened.
[CLIP BEGINS]
MARIA BARTIROMO: These are the things that people are really worried about. Because they first thought it was just about trade. Then they thought it was just about fentanyl. Then, after that we talked about, "Well, maybe it’s currency manipulation. And maybe it's" -- now you’re talking about food testing. And when I bring up the issue of clarity, that’s what I’m talking about, and that’s what I’m hearing from corporate America.
[CLIP ENDS]
SARGENT: Matt, the frustration there is palpable. The key point is that Trump has no real rationale for the tariffs — and it’s so nakedly obvious that even Fox News won’t play along. What do you make of it?
MATT GERTZ (GUEST): I mean, you can almost hear the desperation starting to creep into her voice there. I mean, Maria Bartiromo is a pretty hard core Trumper. She used to have a much stronger reputation as a business reporter, but alongside Trump’s rise, she really got on board with the movement and with him. She’s really his favorite host to interview him about the economy; he did an interview with her earlier this month.
And so, you can almost sense that she’s tried to reach through the television and warn Trump that what he’s doing could backfire in a very big way, and that he should perhaps reconsider what he’s trying to do to the economy before that happens.
SARGENT: Matt, when she interviewed him earlier this month as you mentioned, she literally said it straight to his face. She practically begged Trump to show some clarity on the tariffs. And Trump basically said, "Nope, the tariffs are going to go up." Bartiromo served this opportunity to, you know, make it clear that at some point the craziness is going to stop, and he was like, "Nah, I’m not going to do that."
GERTZ: And then she asked him, "Are you expecting a recession this year?" and he said, "Well, there’s a period of transition happening." Yeah, I think there was a sense from the business community during the campaign that Trump was talking big about these tariffs, but they weren’t really going to happen. It was all part of some negotiation, and they’d be able to talk him out of it. And so, a lot of people from that community got on board with Trump’s campaign. They decided they preferred an insurrectionist to someone who might raise their taxes. And now, it seems to be blowing up in their faces.
And someone like Bartiromo, who, as I recall, was telling her audience that this probably wouldn’t be a big deal, you know, for someone like her, that is a big problem. And I think we’re seeing that manifest in sort of little explosions like that.
SARGENT: We’ve seen a lot of it from Fox figures lately. Bartiromo, for instance, on Monday quoted the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development saying, “Higher tariffs will slow economic growth and push inflation higher worldwide.” Fox anchor Charles Payne was pretty blunt recently saying, “The boom times are over” — I guess that’s an admission that things were much better under Biden. And Payne actually also pronounced consumer sentiment “scary.” Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich said on Fox News, quote, “We are sliding towards a recession.” Matt, does Fox News question Trump that way on any other issue? I can’t think of one.
GERTZ: I can’t think of one either. This is really an unusual phenomenon that we’re seeing — and it doesn’t stop there. We saw Bill McGurn, up from The Wall Street Journal editorial board, say on Fox Business, “I can’t really say anything nice about tariffs. I think they’re anti-growth and a bad thing to play around with, because they can get out of hand.” Fox anchor John Roberts called Trump’s tariffs “perhaps the ticking time bomb.” And Brit Hume said that the tariffs are effectively making taxes higher. This is a long running schism in the right that Trump has stepped in, and you’re seeing some aspects of the right really revolting to it.
SARGENT: Yeah. I want to talk about that schism a little more. Because if you take The Wall Street Journal, for instance, the editorial page is absolutely trashing Trump on the tariffs day in and day out, practically. I think it’s fair to say, don’t you, that Fox News and The Wall Street Journal editorial page are really allied with the GOP’s plutocratic wing?
GERTZ: I don’t know if I’d go that far. I think certainly aspects of Fox News are allied with that wing. I think that Fox, though, really represents the full range of the Trump coalition. And that includes traditional business conservatives like The Wall Street Journal editorial board, but it also includes, you know, the more MAGA nationalist wing, the slash-and-burn libertarians. You can get every flavor of that Trump coalition from watching Fox News — but, and I think this is the crucial aspect, they disagree on a lot of policy. The thing that unites the Trump coalition is that they hate the left and they hate people who are members of the left. And as long as Trump is trashing and destroying liberal institutions and trying to tear down individual progressives, everyone is happy. But once he moves into the realm of policy, all of those different coalition partners have different priorities and different things that they want to get done, and those will often clash in a very big way. And I think that is part of what we’re seeing on Fox News right now.