Fox News’ propagandists cheered President Donald Trump’s tariff climbdown as a “huge win” that shows he was playing “3D chess” and executing the “Art of the Deal.” Meanwhile, reporters at outlets including Fox pointed out that Trump had “capitulated” out of fear that his unilateral imposition of massive taxes on all of our trading partners was triggering a collapse in the bond market.

Trump announced on Wednesday a 90-day pause on the massive tariffs he had proposed the previous week on dozens of countries and farcically described as “reciprocal,” with the countries instead subject to a still-high 10% tariff during bilateral trade negotiations. At the same time, he increased tariffs on China, the largest U.S. trading partner, to a total of a whopping 145%, and left unchanged sectoral tariffs he has proposed or implemented on steel, aluminum, and cars (he also proposed this week additional tariffs on lumber and pharmaceuticals).

The president and his top advisers had repeatedly said that no pause was being contemplated, and the abrupt reversal reportedly took even some close aides by surprise. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who had been defending the planned tariffs in a House hearing when Trump announced the pause, said he had not been informed of the policy change beforehand.

North Korean state TV anchors would blush at the fervor with which Fox’s hosts announced their support for the move on their programs that night.

“We begin with the art of the deal -- told you this was going to happen,” Fox host and Trump political operative Sean Hannity crowed at the top of his show. “It was inevitable. Donald Trump's in a perpetual state of negotiation. A huge win for the president. A huge win for the country. His biggest accomplishment of the second term and there have been many.”

Laura Ingraham trumpeted the tariff shift as “Trump’s 3D chess move,” claiming that the president was “on a roll” and “thinking three steps ahead” while his “naysayers” were left “grasping at straws.”

“Trump created maximum leverage for himself, and now his team’s sitting pretty, taking meetings and doing deals that put America first. And if we don't like how the negotiation is going, our partners have seen the kind of pain we can cause, and they're motivated to do what we want, or else we'll make them feel the same pain,” offered Jesse Watters.

Their narrative that Trump is cooly executing a deliberate plan is total nonsense — he was responding to “a mass sale of bonds” the night before which indicated that “people are losing confidence in the U.S. economy” and could have triggered a financial crisis, as Fox Business’ own senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino reported earlier that day. 

“I want to tell you right now that Donald Trump outsmarted the world,” Gasparino said on Fox after Trump’s announcement. “Trust me. I'm an American, I support my president. But that's not really what happened here from what I understand.”

“It's the bond market and the sort of lending markets that's the plumbing of the economy. And those markets were imploding last night and that's why we have a 90-day freeze,” he explained.

“It is the White House who capitulated, based on everything I hear, and all of my sources,” Gasparino reported in a second segment. “And the reason why is because of the bond market and what happened last night.”

Gasparino’s reporting is consistent with that from outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN.

Indeed, Trump himself publicly acknowledged on Wednesday afternoon that his reversal came because people “were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” and in particular were “queasy” over the bond market. 

That reality is apparently toxic for Fox’s Trump shills. 

When Watters’ Democratic co-host Jessica Tarlov pointed to the bond market gyrations on Wednesday’s edition of The Five, he told her, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know what a bond is.” 

Likewise, Hannity mocked the “stupid people” who deny that “this was the [Trump’s] plan all along,” which he claimed to have “pretty much understood because I know the guy so well.”

Rather than a brilliant plan carefully executed, we are left with a trade agenda that has unclear goals, will cripple small businesses, and will raise prices for American consumers on everything from coffee to cars — and could change at any time based on the whims of one mercurial man.

But that man is the focus of Fox’s cult, and so its high priests are genuflecting and offering sacrifices.