MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Thursday predicted that President Donald Trump’s legal victory earlier in the day would be a short-lived one.
A federal trade court this week blocked Trump’s sweeping tariffs, but an appeals court on Thursday issued a stay as it considers the president’s case.
O’Donnell said the only reason the court granted that stay was because Trump’s attorneys guaranteed the government would issue refunds to anyone who paid tariffs should they lose the case.
Without that promise, O’Donnell said, it’s “very unlikely” the court would have granted the stay.
He also noted that the Treasury Department knows how to issue refunds, since they do it every year at tax time ― and said they’ll be doing it again, and soon, when the next ruling goes against Trump and those tariff refunds must be issued.
“Refund day is coming, and it will be the most humiliating day Donald Trump will suffer in his losing trade war,” O’Donnell said.
Trump fired off a message on his Truth Social website attacking the trade court that had ruled against him, but O’Donnell said that’s more proof the president doesn’t understand the Constitution.
“Donald Trump humiliated himself once again by showing how irreversibly stupid and flawlessly ignorant he is of the actual words of the Constitution and their meaning,” he said, adding that Trump’s social media post in response to the initial legal ruling revealed “severe mental weakness.”
See his full explanation below:
