Lawrence O’Donnell celebrated Wednesday night the U.S. Court of International Trade’s decision to block President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.
“Donald Trump’s illegal tariffs are gone,” O’Donnell announced, telling viewers that the world will, consequently, soon “reset itself around the restoration of law and order in international trade and the crushing of the Trump tariffs and resultant personal worldwide humiliation of Donald Trump.” O’Donnell then called out reporters for not accurately reporting on the legality of Trump’s trade proposals during his 2024 presidential campaign.
“The campaign press corps never reported to voters that those proposals were constitutionally insane,” the “Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” anchor said. “The campaign press corps completely failed the American voter on this issue, with American voters just discovering tonight from the [Court of International Trade] just how illegal and unconstitutional the Trump tariffs always have been.”
You can watch the full “Last Word” segment yourself below.
O’Donnell noted that the Court of International Trade has granted the 12 Democratic governors suing to stop the tariffs not just a temporary injunction but a complete, summary judgment on the matter. “As of this hour tonight, it is no longer legal at any port of entry in the United States for a United States customs service to collect a single dollar of Trump tariffs,” the MSNBC anchor explained. The court’s ruling, O’Donnell said, serves as a reminder of the separation of powers that defines the U.S. federal government.
“The court was very clear that Congress would have the authority to impose any of these tariffs, but the president simply does not have that legal authority,” O’Donnell told MSNBC viewers. “In the same sense that the president does have the power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes, which Donald Trump is doing in the most corrupt manner in history, but Congress does not have the power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes.”
“These distinctions in presidential and Congressional power have always been easy and simple for people to understand, and no one has ever disputed them,” O’Donnell explained. Minutes later, the “Last Word” host concluded, “It’s over. The Trump tariff madness ends now.”
Watch the “Last Word” segment in the video above.
