As Jeb Bush said in 2016, "Donald is great at the one-liners, but he's a chaos candidate and he'd be a chaos president."
Deal or no deal?’ Critics pounce as Trump breaks with own aide immediately after TV spot
While the White House’s top economic advisers have continued to insist that the administration’s massive new
set of tariffs are
non-negotiable, President Donald
Trump’s new contradicting comments made clear he’s not on the same page with his team.
"The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have,” Trump told reporters Thursday aboard Air Force One a day after his Rose Garden “Liberation Day” tariff announcement sunk the market to its lowest point since the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the remarks suggest the president may have cold feet. “This is not a negotiation,” Trump adviser
Peter Navarro said moments earlier in a CNN interview.
Navarro’s remarks followed U.S. Commerce Secretary
Howard Lutnick saying: “I don’t think there’s any chance Trump is going to back off his tariff.”
The shifting positions didn't go unnoticed by political observers across social media, who pointed out the inconsistent messaging coming out of the Trump
White House.
“One big q out of today: Deal or no deal?” Politico reporter Megan Messerly
posted on X. “WH has been adamant tariffs are 'not a negotiation,' a point Lutnick and Navarro reiterated... and then Trump went and told reporters that he's open to deals so long as they 'are giving us something that is good.'"