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Markets Rally Briefly on Trump Tariff Pause Rumor—Plunge After WH Cries ‘Fake News’

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As President Donald Trump’s top billionaire allies and influencers are turning tail and revolting against his “big, beautiful tariffs” that have caused three days of stock market collapses across the globe, top White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett says that when he’s ready, the President will “sign with that big long beautiful signature and he will have made a great deal for America.”

Jamie Dimon, Bill Ackman, and Elon Musk all expressed concerns over the weekend, after U.S. markets crashed.

Call For ’90-Day Time Out’

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, a longtime Democratic donor who endorsed Trump in 2024 and went on to become a top cheerleader for Trump’s policies, blasted the President over his tariffs that in just two days caused $6.6 trillion in lost wealth in the U.S. alone (and $11 trillion since Inauguration Day.)

In a lengthy social media post, Ackman warned of a pending “self-induced economic nuclear winter” should Trump not reverse course on his oppressive tariffs.

Calling for a “90-day time out,” Ackman accused Trump of  “placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike,” and “launching a global economic war against the whole world at once,” which he says puts the U.S. “in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.”

“If, on the other hand, on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,” he warned.

And he chastised Trump, warning that the President “is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president — in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress — are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for.”

Markets Turn Positive Until White House Cries ‘Fake News’

On Monday morning, Trump’s Director of the National Economic Council reportedly said, according to Reuters, that the President is considering a 90-day pause on tariffs.

That caused an immediate spike, with U.S. markets turning positive on the third day of devastating, massive drops.

But the turnaround lasted only minutes, and the markets plunged again into the negative, as the White House called the possibility of a 90-day pause “fake news,” as CNBC reported.

More Billionaires

Other notable billionaires have also urged Trump to rethink the tariffs.

JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, who was not a Trump supporter but in January announced he supported Trump’s tariffs—saying if there’s some economic hardship people should just “get over it”—now warns that Trump’s tariffs “will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession.”

“The economy is facing considerable turbulence (including geopolitics), with the potential positives of tax reform and deregulation and the potential negatives of tariffs and ‘trade wars,'” he writes. “The quicker this issue is resolved, the better.”

CNN calls Dimon’s warning “blunt,” and reports that “rarely has Dimon been so blunt about a single US economic policy.”

“We face the most perilous and complicated geopolitical and economic environment since World War II,” he said.

Even top Trump cheerleader, ally, and administration special employee Elon Musk came out in favor of free trade — the opposite of tariffs — and against at least some of Trump’s tariffs.

Calling it “one of the strongest examples yet of the billionaire SpaceX founder’s break with Trump on tariffs, CNBC reported that early on Monday morning, Musk reposted video of the late Nobel-awarded economist Milton Friedman explaining the importance and benefits of free trade.

Musk “also said [that] he hopes Europe and the U.S. can move ‘to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free-trade zone,’ during a virtual appearance at a meeting of Italy’s far-right League party.”

Also on Monday morning, top Trump economic advisor Kevin Hassett, opened the door to Trump negotiating “deals” on his highly-controversial and, at least so far, highly-destructive tariffs.

‘BIG, LONG, BEAUTIFUL SIGNATURE’

Claiming that 50 countries have approached the White House to negotiate on tariffs, Hassett on Monday morning had told Fox News, “I’ve seen some deals that are great, and President Trump is going to decide if they’re great enough.”

“But again, after after decades and decades of mistreating American workers, it’s going to be tough to get him to decide to really come to the table and sign on the dotted line. But when he does, he’s going to sign with that big, long, beautiful signature, and he’ll have made a great deal for America.”

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‘Orwellian Gaslighting’: Trump CIA Slammed for Retractions of ‘Biased’ Reports

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The Central Intelligence Agency has announced it is retracting certain findings that it now deems “biased,” across a range of reports on topics such as white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ attacks, and contraception.

But according to an MS NOW opinion piece, this is a case of the CIA “yet again spurning intelligence that doesn’t align with Donald Trump’s bigoted agenda.”

“Without providing any evidence,” MS NOW’s Ja’han Jones writes, a CIA news release “calls the reports ‘biased’ and gives credit to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — a group that is led by Trump ally Devin Nunes and includes people like far-right podcast host Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s policy director.”

READ MORE: Trump Previews State of the Union Address in Wild and Rambling White House Remarks

Jones calls the group “a bunch of handpicked MAGA activists” who are “attempting to discredit analysis about white supremacy as the president presses forward with a racist agenda; they’re trying to discredit analysis about LGBTQ+ abuse and discrimination as he pushes policies that discriminate against some LGBTQ+ people; and they’re undermining an analysis about reproductive rights and health care access after the administration absurdly destroyed nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives for women in low-income countries.”

The CIA’s release stated that Director John Ratcliffe ordered retractions or revisions to 19 intelligence products that did not meet CIA and Intelligence Community “analytic tradecraft standards,” and “failed to be independent of political consideration.”

The release also stated that these now-retracted intelligence reports exhibited “substantial deviations from the President’s expectations that CIA’s workforce remains independent from a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint.”

Ratcliffe said, “There is absolutely no room for bias in our work and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record. These actions underscore our commitment to transparency, accountability, and objective intelligence analysis.”

According to Jones, Ratcliffe’s remarks reflect “Orwellian gaslighting.”

READ MORE: Judge Cannon Permanently Blocks Release of Jack Smith Classified Docs Report

 

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Trump Previews State of the Union Address in Wild and Rambling White House Remarks

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President Donald Trump gave angel families at the White House on Monday a small preview of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, while delivering a rambling, often off-script speech at an event where he hosted families of victims of foreign criminal organizations.

“It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” the president remarked.

“We have a country that’s now doing well,” he also said. “We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had, we have the most activity we’ve ever had. I’m making a speech tomorrow night, and you’ll be hearing me say that.”

During the approximately one-hour event, Trump mentioned “these crazy shooters” who go after “consequential” presidents, like Lincoln and JFK.

Trump attributed Kennedy’s being consequential to his “glamour.”

“So maybe I want to be a little bit less consequential,” he said. “Can we hold it back a little bit, please?”

“We had the greatest first term of any president in history,” Trump claimed. “Even radical left people have said that.”

READ MORE: Judge Cannon Permanently Blocks Release of Jack Smith Classified Docs Report

He also alleged that “25 million people” came into the U.S. under President Joe Biden. BBC News, which debunked Trump’s 25 million people claim in December, reported that the “number of migrant crossings at the US border did reach record highs under Biden but not to the level Trump – who has never provided a source for these claims – states.”

Claiming that he “won in a landslide,” Trump said that the “one thing that I regret, about the election and the process, ’cause it’s a much bigger, more important, you look at what we’re doing throughout the world. We’re respected like we’ve never been before.”

“But the one thing that I can’t do anything about is that [Biden] allowed 25 million people, many of these murderers, drug lords, criminals, people from mental institutions, they emptied their mental institutions,” Trump claimed in a long statement.

“All over the world?” he continued. “Not just in South America. They emptied their jails. Many of them from all over the world. Why? Why would we do this? And they walk in, nobody even asks for, like, do you have an identification? Do you have an ID? Um… It’s so crazy. You know, the mayor of New York, and he’s a very nice person. I met him, but his ideology’s not too good. But, uh.. We’re having a massive snowstorm right now. And I’ve heard that he’s asked people to come out and help shovel the snow. Okay, so you get a shovel and you start shoveling, right? What the hell you’re not gonna help too much, but you can help. And hello, darling. Are you? No, right behind you. Look, my friend, right? Are you okay? Yes, you. Are you okay? Are you okay? Good. Good. Good. Are your eyes okay? I gave her money to get her eyes fixed. A lot of money to get her eyes fixed. That doctor ripped me off, but that’s okay.”

READ MORE: ‘Did Not Rule Against Trump’s Tariffs’: Bessent Offers Alternative Interpretation

Addressing his polling numbers, Trump denied he is at forty percent approval (latest polls show even less, with a new CNN poll at 36 percent), saying his numbers were “much higher,” and insisted that he has a great deal of “silent support.”

“I’d love to run against anybody,” he continued. “The real polls say you kill everybody — wouldn’t even be close.”

He also insisted that his second term is “much more powerful” than it would have been had he won in 2020, “because there would be nothing to compare it to. Now they compare it to Biden and that horrible, horrible administration.”

“It just amazes me that there’s not more support out there,” he told the families. “We actually have a silent support, it’s silent — that’s how I won I guess — probably 85 million votes. They say 78 million, 79 million. They cheated at this election too, it was just too big to rig. Too big to rig. But they cheated like hell.”

 

READ MORE: MAGA Existed Before Trump — It Isn’t Going Away When He Leaves Says Op-Ed

 

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MAGA Existed Before Trump — It Isn’t Going Away When He Leaves Says Op-Ed

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President Donald Trump did not create the spirit of “MAGA,” which is at the core of his Make America Great Again movement, but he did “recognize the sentiment, brand it, and give it a rallying cry,” according to an opinion piece in The Hill that suggests that when Trump is gone, MAGA will remain.

“The slogan didn’t invent a movement; it catalyzed one,” wrote Colin Kelly. “It pulled together a fragmented set of conservative circles and gave them a single banner. In that sense, MAGA didn’t emerge from Trump’s imagination — Trump emerged from the cultural terrain MAGA had already shaped.”

Trump’s MAGA slogan “suggested that electing Trump was the only path to restoration,” Kelly also wrote. “And it offered something more personal: supporting Trump would make you great again, too.”

READ MORE: Judge Cannon Permanently Blocks Release of Jack Smith Classified Docs Report

He warned that because the MAGA movement has “intensified” without expanding its base of supporters, “our politics increasingly resembles a kind of rhetorical civil war.”

Kelly says that MAGA’s concerns — including the erosion of the traditional family, undocumented immigrants, the economic decline of rural America, and “the sense that Christian religious values are increasingly dismissed in public life” — are “real.”

He suggests engaging with the “most reasonable” GOP voters, whom he described as those “who may feel culturally displaced but are not committed to perpetual conflict.”

Kelly concluded by writing that acknowledging the concerns of these voters “does not require abandoning the pursuit of civil rights, justice, or equal participation in our system, but rather, it “simply means recognizing that a healthy democracy must be able to hold multiple priorities at once.”

READ MORE: ‘Did Not Rule Against Trump’s Tariffs’: Bessent Offers Alternative Interpretation

 

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