Froomkin: The news media chose not to tell you the truth about tariffs [View all]

https://presswatchers.org/2026/02/the-news-media-chose-not-to-tell-you-the-truth-about-tariffs/

How obviously illegal were Donald Trump’s tariffs?

So obviously illegal that even this radically right-wing, Trump-enabling Supreme Court couldn’t find a way to rule in his favor.

And here’s the thing: It was obvious that they were illegal from the minute Trump imposed them. The Constitution very clearly assigns that sort of power exclusively to Congress. The tariffs were an arbitrary exercise of power well outside the rule of law.

But the mainstream news reporters covering Trump just couldn’t bring themselves to say so.

Similarly, the tariffs were crazy. They were a non-solution to a problem that didn’t exist. They were destabilizing. They were capricious. And, for good measure, Trump didn’t actually seem to understand how tariffs worked.

But reporters just couldn’t bring themselves to say that, either. (Well, one of them did, briefly.)

Instead, the elite Washington press corps did what it always does with Trump. It treated his actions as if they were within the realm of the normal. That’s called normalizing. It selectively quoted and paraphrased him to make him sound like he was saying something in the realm of the rational. That’s called sanewashing.

*snip*