CNBC reporter boasts about Trump's response to her question
A CNBC White House reporter who President Trump snapped at after she asked him about Wall Street branding him a 'chicken' says his fuming response is a 'badge of honor' for her. Megan Cassella faced Trump's wrath on Wednesday as he fumed at her for a 'nasty question' about a new acronym making the rounds on Wall Street about the 'TACO' trade - stood for 'Trump Always Chickens Out.' The Washington correspondent asked for the president's reaction to the emergence of the mocking phrase, which Trump clearly didn't appreciate.
'Don't ever say what you said,' Trump shot back. 'That's a nasty question. To me, that's the nastiest question.' Cassella went live on the air soon after on CNBC, where she said she was proud of the fact Trump 'did not like' her questioning. CNBC anchor Kelly Evans asked for Cassella's response to Trump calling her question 'nasty.' 'He sure did! A badge of honor, I guess,' she responded.
'(The TACO phrase) is not widely known yet, but you have seen it pick up in the press this week. It's why I wanted to ask him about it,' she continued. 'Wall Street loves an acronym, and the idea here is just, yes, the markets will go down when he makes a threat only to rebound often even higher once the threat is back off the table. 'And so far, where we are in sort of this tariff limbo right now,, many of, if not most of the tariff threats that have been leveled so far are not yet in effect.
That could be a different story six months from now. But the question now being will other countries still take him seriously and come to the negotiating table if this sort of pattern continues.' Cassella also defended Trump's insistence that his tariffs don't need to actually be implemented to have an effect, as they can heap pressure on nations to come to the negotiating table. 'He did go on to say that, especially when it comes to the EU and his backing off temporarily, at least of that 50% tariff threat, he says the EU wouldn't be here today negotiating if it weren't for that,' she said.
'Now, when he makes a deal with them for something much more reasonable, people will say, 'Oh, he was chicken.'' It comes as reports emerged this week that Wall Street has taken notice of Trump's habit of threatening massive tariffs on nations and industries around the world, which send markets plunging, before he 'chickens out' days later and doesn't actually go ahead with the levies. This has reportedly been noticed by investors who buy the dip in the markets and wait for Trump to walk back on his threats, sending their stocks soaring up again.
As he bristled at Cassella's question, Trump denied that he had buckled and said he won concessions due to the pressure of his tariffs. 'I've never heard that - you mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set, down to 100 and then down to another number. And I said, you have to open up your whole country?' he continued. 'And because I gave the European Union a 50 percent tax – tariff – and they called up and they said, "Please, let's meet right now. Please, let's meet right now." And I said, Okay, I'll give you till June 9.'
'I actually asked them, I said, What's the date? Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, we'll meet anytime you want, and we have an end date of July 9th. You call that chickening out? Because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing. When Biden didn't have practically anything.' The 'Art of the Deal' author kept going, both denying being a chicken and ripping the reporter who confronted him with the accusation. 'This country was dying. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world -- Six months ago, this country was stone cold, dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that.'
'It's called negotiation. You set a number, and if you go down, you know, if I set a number at a ridiculous high number, I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit they want me to hold that number, 145 percent tariff even. I said man, that really got up.' The 'TACO' term was reportedly coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong in his criticisms of Trump's tariff approach. Despite Trump's defense, for some Wall Street traders, his tariff threats and sudden reversals are becoming as predictable as TACO Tuesday. That's the new acronym that has been making the rounds among investors after the president once again threatened to impose a shock 50 percent tariff on the European Union – sending markets dropping – only to announce a sudden 'pause' on Sunday.
There were some signs Friday that Trump's capacity to fold was already being baked into the markets on Friday. The S&P 500 market index dropped 0.67 percent Friday, the day Trump first made the tariff threat. That was a significant tumble, but perhaps fell short of the economic chaos that would ensue if Trump followed through with the crippling tariffs he proposed, after accusing the European Union of being 'very difficult to deal with' and 'taking advantage' of the U.S. 'They haven't treated our country properly' Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday morning. 'They banded together to take advantage of us.'
By Sunday, following a conversation with European Union President Ursula von der Leyen, Trump announced a pause. Markets rallied when they reopened Tuesday after the long weekend, with the Dow jumping more than 700 points. It was a similar pattern with the 'Liberation Day' tariffs Trump announced April 2, only to announce a 90-day 'pause' after markets tumbled. When Armstrong coined the term, he wrote in early May that a market rally 'has a lot to do with markets realizing that the US administration does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain. 'This is the Taco theory: Trump Always Chickens Out.'
It is not the first time Trump critics have used the animal to mock the president, with protestors previously flying a giant inflatable chicken outside the White House in 2017. The idea proliferated, and now Trump skeptics have been putting it to use. MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell posted a graphic of T.A.C.O. on his evening program. A parody account pictured Trump wearing a sombrero. The New York Times wrote that stocks rallied on the 'TACO trade,' and University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers mocked that it was a Trump tariff policy 'that nearly lasted one entire long weekend.'
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'In a way it's either so secular or even post-secular that it's not threatened by the Christian presence on campus,' he said. "Religious students in our campus are not cloistered from campus. They're also in sports teams, clubs and the newspaper. They're integrated.' Catholics students in Leo's home state cheer his election Catholics at the the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were elated by his election — and reinvigorated in practicing their faith. 'Being able to live out my faith in this extremely secular campus is such a blessing to me,' said student Daniel Vanisko, a lifelong Catholic, later adding in an email that the pope's election 'really helps me to draw closer to my faith, seeing that someone that grew up in the same state as me, is the successor of Peter in the Church." Cavan Morber, a rising junior, said attending UIUC 'gives me chance to be challenged in my beliefs, think critically about what I believe, and share my faith with others.' Asked in an email exchange about the pope's election, Morber replied: 'What a time to be alive!' 'I am hopeful for how he will be able to unite the Church in a time of a lot of division among Catholics and everyone around the world,' Morber added. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
