Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick insisted that the current state of the economy has nothing to do with the policies of President Donald Trump. The claim earned him a rebuke from Mike Allen of Axios.
While U.S. stock markets have hit record highs in recent days, the job market has shown signs of weakening, while prices have been creeping up. Allen interviewed Lutnick on Thursday’s edition of The Axios Show and asked the Commerce secretary about “increasingly bleak” economic data.
ALLEN: Inflation in August ticking up to 4.3%, the highest since ’21. Manufacturing activity shrank in August, six months running. Unemployed workers exceeding job openings. If Biden had numbers like that, you’d be on Fox saying, “What’s going on?”
LUTNICK: So, the economy that Donald Trump owns starts at the end of this year. You can’t–
ALLEN: It doesn’t work that way.
LUTNICK: Wait, wait, wait. You can’t–
ALLEN: January 20th was day one.
LUTNICK: –build factories and get permits and begin in an hour. You just can’t. And the scale by which these companies are committed to building factories is in America is unprecedented.
(January 20th gave Trump a mirage of fake numbers, remembers. Time out – foul ball. So, we have to use real experienced numbers for REAL TIME (honest numbers.)
Lutnick went on to insist that anyone worried about the economy is “worried incorrectly” and looking in the wrong direction.
On April 2, Trump announced what he called “Liberation Day,” and unveiled sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries. Trump circumvented Congress and imposed the tariffs unilaterally. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging them.
“That case is really important to win because it’s made us a rich country,” Trump said on Friday. “It’s made us a rich country because I don’t want to call it retribution, but we’ve been ripped off.”
FILE – Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks before Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at the Turning Point Believers’ Summit, July 26, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File
They were careful with the explicit imagery — as usual. But did it make any difference?
Traditional news organizations were cautious in their midafternoon coverage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination Wednesday not to depict the moment he was shot, instead showing video of him tossing a hat to his audience moments before, and panicked onlookers scattering wildly in the moments after.
In practical terms, though, it mattered little. Gory video of the shooting was available almost instantly online, from several angles, in slow-motion and real-time speed. Millions of people watched.
Video was easy to find on X, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube — even on Truth Social, where President Donald Trump posted official word of the conservative activist’s death. It illustrated how the “gatekeeping” role of news organizations has changed in the era of social media.
Kirk was shot at a public event before hundreds of people at a Utah college campus, many of them holding up phones to record a celebrity in their midst and savvy about how to disseminate video evidence of a news event.
On X, there was a video showing a direct view of Kirk being shot, his body recoiling and blood gushing from a wound. One video was a loop showing the moment of impact in slow-motion, stopping before blood is seen. Another, taken from Kirk’s left, included audio that suggested Kirk was talking about gun violence at the moment he was shot.
For more than 150 years, news organizations like newspapers and television networks have long been accustomed to “gatekeeping” when it comes to explicit content — making editorial decisions around violent events to decide what images and words appear on their platforms for their readers or viewers. But in the fragmented era of social media, smartphones and instant video uploads, editorial decisions by legacy media are less impactful than ever.Images spread across the country
Across the country in Ithaca, New York, college professor Sarah Kreps’ teenage sons texted her about Kirk’s assassination shortly after school was dismissed and they could access their phones.
No, she told them. He was shot, but there were no reports that he had died. Her son answered: Have you seen the video? There’s no way he could have survived that.
The videos were posted and reposted at lightning speed. One person on X urged “stop the violence” but then included a clip of the shooting. Several people took to social media to plead for people not to spread the images. “For the love of God and Charlie’s family,” read one message, “just stop.”
YouTube said it was removing “some graphic content” related to the event if it doesn’t provide sufficient context, and restricting videos so they could not be seen by users under age 18 or those who are not signed in, the company said.
“Our hearts are with Charlie Kirk’s family following his tragic death,” YouTube said. “We are closely monitoring our platform and prominently elevating news content on the homepage, in search and in recommendations to help people stay informed.”
Meta’s rules don’t prohibit posting videos like Kirk’s shooting, but warning labels are applied and they are not shown to users who say they are under 18. The parent company of Instagram, Facebook and Threads referred a reporter to the company’s policies on violent and graphic content, which they indicated would apply in this case, but had no further comment. An X representative did not immediately return a request for comment.
It’s an issue social media companies have dealt with before, in equally gruesome circumstances. Facebook was forced to contend with people wanting to livestream violence with a mass shooting in New Zealand in 2019, said Cornell University’s Kreps, author of the forthcoming book, “Harnessing Disruption: Building the Tech Future Without Breaking Society.”Getting to the other side
Some images seeped out into more traditional media. TMZ posted a video of Kirk in which a shot and a voice saying, “Oh, my God,” can be heard, but Kirk’s upper body was blurred out. A similar video with a blurred image of Kirk was posted on the New York Post’s website.
In such an atmosphere, the care shown by most traditional news outlets may seem quaint or old-fashioned. But news industry leaders are acutely aware of protecting people from graphic images when they are not expecting it; happening upon them is a little harder online, where many people have to search for and click on an image if they want to see it — if it hasn’t already been sent to you or your group chat.
There can also be an important message sent by news outlets being cautious in what they show, Kreps said. “The traditional media can amplify and validate behavior,” she said. “It can be a signal for how things should be stigmatized, rather than validated or normalized.”
But on the day of the shooting in a politically polarized country, the easy availability of shocking images ran the risk of making society’s wound even more painful.
“I don’t see how many signs of how we get — as a people, as a nation — to the other side of this,” said CNN’s David Chalian. “I think we are broken, and potentially beyond repair.”
President Donald Trump remembers the life of Charlie Kirk on Fox & Friends after the assassination of the Turning Point USA co-founder.
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The New York Times issued a correction Thursday, admitting it had wrongly attributed an antisemitic remark to Charlie Kirk when the late Turning Point USA founder was actually critiquing the comment.
As part of its story on where Kirk stood on key political issues in the wake of his assassination, The Times reported Kirk was “repeatedly accused of antisemitism.” Kirk was a staunch supporter of Israel and has been praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was quoting a statement from a post on social media and went on to critique it. It was not his own statement,” the New York Times wrote beneath the report.
The New York Times said it had wrongly attributed an antisemitic comment to the late Charlie Kirk. (Rebecca Noble/AFP via Getty Images)
The Times corrected the report, but as of Friday morning it still insisted Kirk “was repeatedly accused of antisemitism, including by fellow conservatives.” It reported he was a proponent of “replacement theory” and “accused Jewish philanthropists of fomenting anti-whiteness by supporting liberal antiracism causes like the Black Lives Matter movement.”
“Allies of Mr. Kirk often sought to defend him against accusations of antisemitism by citing his support for Israel. Mr. Kirk defended Israel’s actions in Gaza,” the Times added.
The Times did not specify exactly what was corrected from its original report, and it was unclear if it deleted the passage in question.
The New York Times declined comment when reached by Fox News Digital.
The paper was sharply criticized for the report on social media.
Netanyahu delivered an emotional tribute to Kirk after his tragic death, calling the 31-year-old a “once-in-a-generation” figure.
“He was a defender of our common Judeo-Christian civilization. He was unbelievably excited to walk in the footsteps of Jesus here. He valued our bond, the bond between America and Israel,” Netanyahu said Thursday on “The Faulkner Focus.”
Charlie Kirk speaks before he is shot during Turning Point’s visit to Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP)
“He had his truth. He stood up for it,” Netanyahu continued. “But he said, ‘You can come and debate me.’ He invited that debate. He certainly didn’t invite the violence, the horrible violence that tried to silence him.”
Some progressive sites like Snopes have accused Kirk of engaging in antisemitic tropes, such as his remarks on his podcast on Oct. 26, 2023, in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.
Kirk was critical of liberal Jewish donors, saying he and other conservative Christians were the ones trying most to defend Judaism and Israel in the U.S.
“In a stunning turn of events, the people that the [Anti-Defamation League] said were Jew haters are actually the biggest defenders of Judaism and Israel right now in the country. Us,” he said, pointing at himself. “Conservative evangelical Christians. And Jewish donors, they have a lot of explaining to do, a lot of de-coupling to do, because Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits.”
“Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years,” he said on another show on Nov. 7, 2023. “Stop supporting causes that hate you.”
The New York Times issued a correction on Thursday after falsely accusing Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk of making an antisemitic claim on his podcast.
The Times falsely accused Kirk of stating on his podcast in 2023 that Jewish communities are “pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites” that they want people to stop using against them. However, Kirk cited a tweet making that claim and critiqued it, causing the Times’ correction to be made.
“An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was quoting a statement from a post on social media and went on to critique it. It was not his own statement,” the correction reads.
In actuality, Kirk clarified that not all Jews are pushing hatred onto white people. He stated that certain communities have pushed it by supporting left-wing causes such as Black Lives Matter.
“Now let me just say, this is not a very well-written tweet. It’s very confusing. I’ll go through what they’re basically saying here. Half of this tweet is true, half of it, I don’t like. You want the truth said to your face. There it is. Elon responds, and he says you have said the actual truth … But the first part is absolutely true. Let’s go to this. Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” Kirk said.
“Now I don’t like generalizations. Not every Jewish person believes that. But it is true, the Anti-Defamation League was part and parcel with Black Lives Matter. It is true that some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans,” Kirk said.
After his death, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to Kirk as a “lionhearted friend of Israel” who “stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”
The entirety of the article appeared critical of Kirk’s conservative views, such as his belief that teachers should not push gender ideology onto children. It also noted that Kirk criticized society’s fixation on race and George Floyd, who factually had a lengthy criminal history before his death on May 25, 2020.
The article stated that Kirk “dismissed concerns” about climate change and that he rejected the idea that global warming is an “existential threat.”
Authorities arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson for the assassination of Kirk on Friday following a large-scale manhunt. President Donald Trump revealed on “Fox & Friends” that someone “very close” to Robinson turned him in.
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Trump’s economy hasn’t blown up under tariffs as many predicted. Is he really proving the naysayers wrong?
We have the duly-elected President putting our country first after it was pilfered by the previous administration and he is working 24/7 to put us back in contention with the rest of the world and the left is kicking and screaming about the progress. All of the left’s Democrats’ final reports were fraud for starters.
The left is still sitting on the sidelines moaning and groaning that they didn’t like DOGE since it’s streaming puts a “clean” or “dirty” face on the results.
The rest of the world loved what the Biden administration did to us and now are bitching about the tariffs which are placed to put us on equal footing. Did they offer to help us?
They lost their bread basket of the world and that is what they don’t like – the foreign aid.
The President never said it “was going to be easy.” In fact, he stated that it would be rough until we can get our feet on the ground and start up the American manufacturing engine. After the last 12 years of licking our Democrat wounds, a dragging sick ruler, and listening to the fake news was not easy. We sure miss the “O’Reilly” reports that we could depend on to be true. In fact we don’t even watch TV any more.
It is time for the left to rise to the occasion and get a job to help our job numbers.
Image by Senator Mark Warner, Creative Commons 2.0.
Trump Upends the International Economic Order
Protectionism by Another Name
Tariff hikes across the board, political interference through trade threats, pressure on US multinational corporations, supply chain disruptions—these are among the ways the Trump administration is trying to change economic globalization, from one based on consensus among the major trading states to one based on America First. Few countries find America First a model worth supporting.
Trump administration officials consider the global trading order established at the end of World War II “untenable and unsustainable,” to quote Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative. He writes about “American frustration at the system’s failure to adapt to meet the essential needs of sovereign nations,” which really means the US alone.
The alternative? Not a new global system based on multilateral cooperation, since that would limit US actions. Instead, the Trump people prefer “a mix of tariffs and deals for foreign market access and investment”—in other words, the approach taken with the European Union (EU) and Japan.
And as between tariffs and “deals,” tariffs have priority because they can punish countries that have protected their markets and used various measures, such as subsidies and “lax labor and environmental standards,” to enhance their trade position. China comes first to mind. The administration is determined to stop the consequent flight of US capital and production abroad.
This America First argument is a recipe for trade protectionism, the weaponization of tariffs, and shakedown of US corporations. We can see the early results: not a win for American workers and consumers, nor even for many multinational corporations, but another opportunity for the concentration of political power in the Oval Office.
Tariffs can be wielded to benefit those who are willing to play Trump’s game: invest in the US or suffer the consequences. In an unprecedented display of state capitalism, the administration has taken a slice of investment deals abroad—such as Nvidia’s AI chip sales in China—and a government share in US corporations, as in the Nippon Steel-US Steel deal and the 10% government share Trump demanded of Intel.
Trump’s New Trading Order
Trump’s new trading order doesn’t distinguish between friend and adversary. Tariffs are being imposed based mainly on political rather than commercial considerations. With few exceptions—Russia, so far, is one—high tariffs have hit India, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union just as hard as they have hit China.
The US trade deficit is rarely cited as the main reason for the high tariffs. India’s purchases of Russian oil, Canada’s constant criticism of Trump, South Korea’s low level of military spending, Brazil’s trial of right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro, and China’s challenge to the US as global leader—these are among the actual reasons for Trump’s tariffs. He’s a spiteful and vengeful man.
Careful reflection on the possible reactions of countries hit with the tariffs doesn’t seem to have occurred in the Trump camp. Trump and his inner circle have always been oblivious to the power of nationalism abroad even as they nurture American nationalism.
The Canadians have turned to other markets and to “buy Canadian.” No Kentucky bourbon on their shelves!
India is boycotting US goods, and its leader is cozying up to Beijing and Moscow.
The Chinese have embraced self-reliance in computer chips, to the point where car manufacturers are being told to stop using foreign chips. A boycott of US soybeans, sales of which Trump had insisted China should double, is underway.
Brazil’s leader has firmly rejected Trump’s interference in its judicial processes.
South Korea, Japan, and the EU have all pledged major new investments in the US, knowing full well that they can string along the actual investment process—and might never have to make them at all if there’s a change in administration.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Michael Froman warns:
“If Washington continues on its current course—defined by unilateralism, transactionalism, and mercantilism—the consequences will be grim, especially as Beijing continues on its own damaging course of subsidized excess capacity, predatory export policies, and economic coercion. The risk of the United States and China playing by their own rules, with power the only real constraint, is contagion: if the two largest economies in the world operate outside the rules-based system, other countries will increasingly do the same, leading to rising uncertainty, drags on productivity, and lower overall growth.”
In the Real World, Bad News for Trump
Blame should, however, fall mainly on the US, for while Trump is rejecting globalization, the Chinese are embracing it. If the entry of their goods into US markets is proving too expensive, they are moving exports and production elsewhere.
The Chinese have become Global South leaders through their Belt and Road Initiative, which provides development loans, and through the export of goods, services, and production lines, particularly to Africa and Southeast Asia but increasingly to Latin America. The more trade pressure Trump exerts, the better the Chinese look to many developing countries.
The US economy is supposed to be the chief beneficiary of these trade policy shifts. But it’s not happening. At a macroeconomic level, there is modest growth in GDP. And corporate profits are up. But most key indicators of economic health speak to serious problems already in sight or soon to be. Job figures are far below expectations.
Fortune magazine reports that a third of American CEOs plan to reduce their work force and increase prices. Farmers who rely on migrant labor are suffering. Consumer confidence and spending are down, inflation is moving upwards, home purchases are down, and foreign tourism is way down. Some economists are predicting a recession, others stagflation.
Trump’s tariffs are widely understood to be a national sales tax which, as Forbes reports, “will yank back from consumers’ wallets about half the projected tax savings from the One Big Beautiful Bill’s extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts.”
Yet Trump and his yes-men will continue to claim to the bitter end that all the bad news is fake and that tariffs are working as intended. But have you noticed that they now say the good news won’t come until next year?
****
(The above paragraph is a good example. He is not blaming Biden/Obama for the 12 years of weaponization/corruption and fraud committed. Still blaming the President. Stupid is as stupid does.)
Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University.
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
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