Fox News’ The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro declared bluntly that she didn’t “really care” about her 401(k) on Thursday after the stock market nosedived in response to President Donald Trump’s new tariffs.
During a debate about Trump’s controversial tariffs, and their economic effect
in the United States, Pirro declared:
When President Trump first started going after Canada and Mexico, everybody was like, “Oh my gosh, they’re our neighbors, they’re wonderful people, why are we doing this? We love the Canadians.” Well, the truth is China is making cars in Mexico and Canada and not paying a tariff on them and selling them in the United States while they are putting a tariff on our cars. Look, you are going to tariff my goods, but I’m going to lay down and let you roll all over me and sell your stuff with virtually no tariff on it? Enough. And this is what Donald Trump ran on and he’s delivering.
The Fox News co-host then said, “And you know what? I don’t really care about my 401(k) today. You know why? Not that I can afford it, not that it isn’t important, not that I’m not at a point in my life where I should be worried about my 401(k), because I am, but this is what I believe. I believe in this man.”
She explained, “I believe that what we are seeing now with his bringing in a trillion dollars in business and manufacturing, and companies moving back to the United States, and seeing what we saw during Covid when we couldn’t– we had all those supply chain problems, we couldn’t get medicine in this country, other countries were prioritizing themselves before they were sending stuff to us, it’s about time we recognized we’ve got to have manufacturing in this country, and we need to bring them to the table.”
Pirro concluded, “And Donald Trump is the only one who can do it because he’s got the biggest consumer base in the world, he’s not afraid of anybody.”
The Dow went down
by 2.7% on Thursday after Trump unveiled new “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries and territories, including uninhabited islands
.
In a rare move on Fox Business on Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) flat out rejected some pro-Trump spin from host Larry Kudlow – a former Trump economic advisor.
Cruz, who is a reliable pro-Trump voice in the media, told Kudlow he was against tariffs and hoped that they would be quickly unwound. Kudlow offered a scenario in which the Trump tariff revenue could be given back to taxpayers in what he called a “dividend.”
“Now on the tax cuts, I don’t know if you heard any of this show. Because of Mr. Trump’s reciprocity policy that he announced yesterday, the White House is saying there could be $600 billion in revenues from the tariffs,” Kudlow began, outlining his plan:
I am proposing that those revenues be put into the budget resolution and the reconciliation bill and that you cut taxes even more to help the middle class who have been shouldering the burden of falling real wages for about 25 years because of unfair and unjust trading practices. If you have $600 billion, Senator, those are the estimates.
I mean, out 10 years is a gigantic number. We need a fresh, we need, you need tax cuts, middle-class tax cuts. Corporate tax cuts? I mean, I’m calling it a tariff dividend for taxpayers. What do you think? I want you to carry this ball for me.
“So Larry, you know I’m always in favor of more tax cuts and bigger tax cuts, and I’m fighting to make this tax cut as big and bold as possible. Look, I think it is a mistake to assume that we will have high tariffs in perpetuity. I don’t think that would be good economic policy. I am not a fan of tariffs,” Cruz said, adding:
And the announcement yesterday, look, time is going to tell in the next month or two or three what happens if the result of yesterday’s announcement is a lot of our trading partners across the globe dramatically reduce the tariffs they charge on U.S. goods and services, and the consequence of that is the U. S. government dramatically cuts the tariffs that were announced yesterday.
That would be a great outcome. That would good for America. If the result is our trading partner jack up their tariffs and we have high tariffs everywhere, I think that is a bad outcome for America, tariffs
are a tax on consumers and I’m not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers so my hope is these tariffs are short lived and they serve as leverage to lower tariffs across the globe.
“So you don’t want to put any more money, you don’t want to hand any money over to the consumers. The workforce has been hurt by these unfair trading
practices,” Kudlow replied.
“Cut taxes, cut taxes, I agree with you. I don’t know that you could get too aggressive for me in cutting taxes. I just don’t want to simultaneously embrace raising taxes on consumers. And so I like half of your idea, but not necessarily the other half,” Cruz said, standing is ground.
President Donald Trump showed off his “Gold Card” on Air Force One to reporters on Thursday, proudly displaying the $5 million card with his face on it that can buy U.S. residency.
“For $5 million, this could be yours. That was the first of the cards. You know what that card is? It’s the Gold Card, the Trump Card, Gold Card,” Trump boasted.
“Who is the first buyer?” asked an off-camera reporter.
“Me,” shot back Trump.
“The second?” pressed the reporter.
“I don’t know, but I’m the first buyer. It’ll be out in about less than two weeks. Pretty exciting, right?” Trump boasted.
“Are you ready for some questions?” asked another reporter.
“Anybody want to buy one?” Trump quipped.
Notably, Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced in late March the “sale of 1,000 Gold Cards this week, raising $5 billion in a single day,” according to Forbes. The report added
:
Priced at $5 million each, President Trump introduced these Gold Cards in February 2025, as an opportunity for wealthy foreign citizens to work and live in the United States, granting them permanent U.S. residency and effectively replacing the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program.
Trump went on to take questions and was immediately asked about the impact of his tariffs
. “We’d love to get your reaction, sir, to what’s going on in the financial markets today.”
“Well, I mean, it’s to be expected where this is a patient that was very sick. We inherited– we really inherited a terrible economy, as you know, with a lot of problems, including loss of manufacturing and plants closed up all over the country. You know, we’ve lost 90,000 plants since NAFTA, if you think of that. Ninety thousand. It’s not even believable. Had about 6 million jobs. And so it’s a sick, it was a sick patient that went through an operation on liberation day. And it’s going to be, it’s gonna be a booming country, a very booming country. It’s going be amazing actually. We see it because we have trillions of dollars committed to come in,” Trump replied.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force on Thursday that he often listens to advice from far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.
Trump
denied reports Loomer
played a role in his administration’s decision to fire three National Security Council staffers after she laid out grievances against them.
Loomer was present
during a Wednesday Oval Office meeting along with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Per numerous reports, Loomer accused the officials who were let go of being “neocons.”
Axios reported
three people were dismissed when Loomer said they “slipped through” a vetting process to ensure no George W. Bush-era Republicans ended up working for Trump.
The New York Timesreported
, “Ms. Loomer walked into the White House with a sheaf of papers, which amounted to a mass of opposition research attacking the character and loyalty of numerous N.S.C. officials, two of the people said. She proceeded to excoriate them in front of their boss, the national security adviser Michael Waltz, who was also in the meeting.”
Aboard Air Force One, Trump confirmed some staffers had been fired. He denied Loomer had anything to do with the firings during a conversation with numerous reporters.
“Yeah, so Laura Loomer is a very good patriot,” Trump said when asked about the meeting. “She’s a very strong person and I saw her yesterday for a little while she has – she makes recommendations of things and people, and sometimes I listen to those recommendations like I do with everybody. I listen to everybody and then I make a decision. But I saw her yesterday she was at the ceremony. She’s – she’ll always have something to say – usually very constructive.”
Trump said Loomer made some job recommendations but denied he fired anyone on her behalf.
“She recommended certain people for jobs,” Trump said. “Well, she’ll recommend [firings] too, but yesterday she recommended some people for jobs.”
Trump was also asked who Loomer had recommended for White House jobs.
“Well, I don’t want to say that,” he replied. “But she’s recommended some good people over the years. She’s been in the party a long time, she’s done a good job.”
CNN’s Manu Raju chased down several Republican Senators on Thursday for their reactions to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that sent the stock market into a freefall.
“The consequences are yet to be fully known, but I would have thought they would have been less dramatic, less significant. And I think we ought to be focused on our economic adversaries and be… less damaging to our economic allies,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) told Raju.
“What about the impact on Kansans specifically in the ag industry?” Raju pressed in the clip.
“So I’ve said this from the beginning that we often experience retaliatory tariffs that come against our commodities, and it’s very damaging,” Moran replied. Raju shared
the clip on X and noted Moran also said, “We often lose markets
with tariffs and they don’t come back.”
Next Raju played a clip of Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) saying, “I think there’ll be some products that there’s going to be benefit for and some will be detriment on it and we’ve got to be able to work this out.”
“What might have a detriment?” Raju followed up.
“Things like clothing, electronics, some of those things that are only made overseas now,” Lankford replied.
“You think people want to pay more for cars?” Raju then asks Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).
“People want American jobs. This is about American jobs,” Scott replied.
Raju then ended his report, saying, “And that last comment comes from Senator Rick Scott defending the president’s actions here. What you’re hearing from a lot of Republicans is that they say there’s going to be some short-term pain through all of this. But Donald Trump’s long-term vision, they say, will bring back American manufacturing, would change– improve Americans’ wages.”
“And they talk about things such as changing how the regulatory environment here in the United States extending the Trump era tax cuts back from his first Trump term. The question is, though, that’s going to take some time to take effect. If it does take effect,” Raju commented, concluding:
And will Americans be okay with having to pay for more prices in the short-term? One Senate, key Senate Republican just weighed in on this as well. That’s the majority leader of the United States Senate, John Thune, someone who has pushed for free trade for years and years and years and represents an agricultural state of South Dakota.
He just told our colleague Ted Barrett, he said, ‘We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and see how it’s going.’ So some unease there from the top Republican who’s yet to criticize the administration, but is still uncertain about how this will all play out.
Fox News contributor and conservative legal commentator Andy McCarthy rebuked Vice President JD Vance on Thursday over his defense of the Trump administration’s deportation strategy.
After first arguing that Vance was incorrect to characterize JudgeJames Boasberg as “radical left” — and even going so far as to submit that he’s “not a bad judge” and “certainly not a lunatic,” McCarthy
was asked to react to Vance’s declaration that “We do not ask permission from far-left Democrats before we deport illegal immigrants. We do the American people’s business.”
“Well, I just think the politics is overwhelming the law here. No one is saying they can’t deport these people. Nobody is saying that. But in the United States, we have due process of law, right? When I prosecuted foreign terrorists, who all in the end ended up — or most of them — getting life sentences, I couldn’t say to the agent, ‘Go arrest them,’ and instead of bringing them to court, put them on a plane and take them to a third country,” submitted McCarthy. “You know, we have laws about how, you know, the process that you have to go through in order to obtain that outcome. And there’s two things the courts are very clear on here. One is the courts is going to defer to the political branches about who gets to be in this country and who doesn’t get to be in this county. They’re going to have a lot of running room on that. But you have comply with the due process. They’re very clear on that.”
Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway offered an all-time spin job after a major U.S. automaker announced it will temporarily lay off 900 workers in the U.S.
On Thursday, Stellantis, whose brands include Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram Trucks, announced the layoffs
one day after President Donald Trump rolled out sweeping tariffs on all imports. Stellantis is also pausing production
at its factories in Canada and Mexico. Trump’s measures include a 25% tariff on all auto imports and the administration is misleadingly referring to the measures as “reciprocal tariffs,” which it justified by falsely claiming
U.S. trading partners have levied exorbitant tariffs on American goods.
Markets did not take well to the plan, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed nearly 1,700 points or about four percent.
Conway, a former White House adviser in the first Trump administration, appeared on Thursday’s edition of The Story on Fox News. Host Martha MacCallum noted the president’s long-held fixation on tariffs and said Trump “is swinging for the fences with all of this.”
“This is President Trump who is echoing much of what he did and wanted to do even more of in his first term and completing that transaction now,” Conway replied before praising Stellantis for halting production in Mexico. While doing so, she elided the issue of the company’s layoffs in the U.S.
“We were seeing some positive reaction today,” she continued. “For all the negative Debbie downers, look at the positive reaction. Stellantis, which owns Chrysler and Ram and Jeep, they came out today and said that they are going to stop producing in Mexico. They are one of the ones, the big manufacturers in Mexico. They’re going to stop doing that.”
CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday poked fun at President Donald Trump imposing tariffs on Arctic islands inhabited by penguins and not people.
The day before, Trump’s “Liberation Day” involved a multitude of tariffs on U.S. trade partners. The plan has proven to be exceptionally polarizing, with the stock market responding with sharp declines across the board.
As part of his presentation, Trump held up a lengthy chart detailing the supposed tariffs that other countries have on the U.S., and his proposed “reciprocal” tariffs on them. Among the list was Heard Island and the McDonald Islands, a group of islands owned by Australia near Antartica. According to the chart, the Islands have a 10% tariff on the U.S.
The problem with that is the fact that no humans actually live there
. There have been a handful of expeditions to the islands over the last several decades, but only permanent residents are seals, penguins, and other seabirds.
Bash pointed out the tariffs on Thursday’s episode of Inside Politics when she said:
No one is safe from President Trump’s new tariffs — not even penguins. A remote island near Antarctica that is home to mainly penguin — no humans — is now subject to a 10% American tariff. This is not a joke. We are not kidding. These penguins, who do not trade goods or services with the United States as far as we know, are on the receiving end of a new tax.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acknowledged Thursday that some programs and federal employees who were fired earlier this week would be reinstated, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to the Journal
, one program that was axed was one from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracked juvenile lead exposure.
With regard to the CDC initiative that monitors blood lead levels in children, Kennedy
admitted that some mistakes were made during the reorganization, explaining that agency leaders were open to making broad cuts – even if decisions to do so later had to be reversed.
“Some programs that were cut, they’re being reinstated,” Kennedy said. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut. We’re reinstating them.”
That program and others were slashed this week amid after a sweeping reorganization of the department, which led to mass layoffs and program eliminations – and targeting thousands of jobs.
Last week, Kennedy revealed plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of the restructuring of HHS and the agencies it oversees.
The layoffs began Monday night and continued into Tuesday morning. Employees scrambled to determine which positions had been eliminated and how to maintain essential government operations, according to the report.
Kennedy implied that slashing a majority of HHS staffers and programs was a DOGE
-like goal – and that reinstating some programs later was a feature and not necessarily a bug.
“That was always the plan,” Kennedy said of the chaotic way in which the cuts were made.
Kennedy’s sledgehammer cuts have led to the elimination of entire divisions within the CDC, FDA, and NIH.
Some programs that were slashed focused on HIV prevention, violence prevention, injury prevention, and Freedom of Information Act requests.
Kennedy defended the cuts as crucial to streamlining HHS.
President Donald Trump insisted that things were “going very well” with his sweeping tariffs after Fox’s Peter Doocy pointed out the brutal day for the stock market.
Trump on Wednesday announced the tariffs during a presentation in the White House Rose Garden. They include a 25% tariff on foreign-made vehicles and a slew of “reciprocal” tariffs with dozens of the United States’ trade partners. The ultimate goal is to bring industry back to America, but economic experts for months warned about the immediate impact the tariffs would have.
When Trump made his announcement, those effects were indeed immediate on the stock market. Countless stocks saw significant dips after the market closed, and things got even worse when it opened Thursday morning.
As he was leaving for a LIV Golf tournament Thursday, Trump took just a single question
from Doocy before heading onto Marine One.
President Trump: “I think its going very well. It was an operation, like when a when a patient gets operated on. It’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is. We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country…the markets are going to boom.” pic.twitter.com/hhrGOFgX2J
“The markets today are way down — the worst day in years — because of the tariffs,” Doocy said. “So, how’s it going?”
The president claimed things were going well.
“I think it’s going very well,” he said. “It was an operation, like when a patient gets operated on. It’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is. We have six or seven trillion dollars coming into our country, and we’ve never seen anything like it. The markets are gonna boom; the stock is gonna boom; the country is gonna boom; and the rest of the world wants to see is there any way they can make a deal. They’ve taken advantage of us for many, many years. For many years, we’ve been at the wrong side of the ball; and I’ll tell you what, I think it’s gonna be unbelievable.”
