A recent exchange between President Donald Trump and one of the wealthiest Americans was particularly revealing in that it showed what the administration is most afraid of, according to one columnist.
In a Monday essay, The New Republic’s Greg Sargent remarked on how White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s answer to a reporter’s question during her daily briefing shined a light on what may be the administration’s biggest fear. Leavitt was responding to one reporter who brought up Trump’s call with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, where the two reportedly had a heated discussion about a proposal for Amazon’s “Haul” website (which competes with other discount shopping websites like Shein and Temu) to display the cost of tariffs next to the full price of an item, though the company ultimately decided to not go through with it for the time being. Leavitt called the idea a “hostile and political act by Amazon.”
“You might be tempted to see this as another sign of Trump’s fearsome strength: He merely hinted at unleashing the power of the government on Amazon, a company worth $2 trillion, and it immediately fell into line, right?” Sargent wrote. “Naah. This little saga is better seen as highly revealing of Trump’s weakness right now, both on tariffs specifically and more generally. The last thing that Trump and his propagandists can tolerate is the spectacle of voters being told basic facts about his tariffs.”
READ MORE: ‘Destroyed for no reason’: Trump fires would-be mom hour after she nabs foster parent slot
Sargent observed that one telling moment of Monday’s White House press briefing was that Leavitt outright ignored the rest of the reporter’s question after discussing the call with Bezos. The second half of the question — “isn’t that a perfect demonstration that it’s the American consumer who is paying for these policies?” — was never answered.
According to Sargent, this could prove to be the administration’s Achilles’ heel, as it shows Trump is sensitive to the perception that his policies are at the heart of Americans paying higher prices for goods under his leadership than they did before he came back to the White House. He recalled an earlier conversation Trump had with automakers in which he warned them against raising prices in response to his tariffs, and that retribution may await any company that passed along the higher trade duties to consumers.
“Amusingly, all this really did was reveal that Trump himself knows that importers and domestic manufacturers using imported parts — and not ‘other countries’ — are the ones who will pay the tariffs,” he wrote. “Since then, there have been no indications that automakers will be bullied into swallowing the costs of Trump’s tariffs. Indeed, the White House just announced some tariff relief for them, an apparent backing down.”
“So there’s an opening here for others to step into the breach that Amazon left by announcing it will not inform consumers about tariffs’ actual costs,” he continued. “Why can’t other retailers—ones large and small, ones not easily cowed by Trump—run with the idea?”
READ MORE: Busted: MSNBC fact-checker corrects Karoline Leavitt’s critical error
Click here to read Sargent’s full column (subscription required).
