MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Celebrates ‘Worldwide Humiliation’ of Trump After Tariffs Are Blocked

On the Wednesday, May 28, episode of The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell, host Lawrence O’Donnell ripped into Donald Trump after the president’s tariffs were blocked by the United States Court of International Trade.

“Futures trading is now soaring tonight in the expectation of an explosively positive reaction by the stock market tomorrow when the world will reset itself around the restoration around law and order in international trade and the crushing of the Trump tariffs, and the resultant personal worldwide humiliation of Donald Trump,” O’Donnell began. “The Trump tariffs were always illegal and unconstitutional, and you heard that on this program every time we covered Donald Trump’s comments about tariffs.”

He also slammed Trump’s campaign press corps for “never reporting to voters that those proposals were constitutionally insane” during Trump’s campaign for president. “The person pronouncing those proposals at those Trump rallies was constitutionally out of his mind just based on what he was saying about the tariffs alone,” O’Donnell continued. “The campaign press corps completely failed voters on this issue.”

The journalist slammed Trump for “trying to kill the Constitution of the United States in a different way every day,” adding, “He tried and failed thanks to the Court of International Trade to sound the death knell of the Constitution by stealing Congress’ exclusive power over tariffs.”

After reading some excerpts from the court’s ruling, O’Donnell continued to take aim at Trump, adding, “For Donald Trump’s benefit, though he, of course, could never read a single page of court opinion, but mostly for the benefit of the U.S. Supreme Court, the trade experts wrote a brief history of international trade right in their opinion, and a brief history of international trade law, for Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices to study because they know very little about international trade law.”

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Trump appealed the court’s decision that he did not have the authority to impose tariffs, and a federal appeals court paused the block less than 24 hours later. Both sides have been ordered to submit written arguments on the issue by early June.