Lawrence: Trump is the only president stupid enough to believe he has unlimited power to set tariffs
The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Lawrence O'Donnell, MS NOW
4.5 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | A president of the United States calling for the execution of members of Congress because they publicly recited the law is obviously a reason to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove that president from office for extreme mental incapacity and possible dementia. |
| 0:18.6 | But the White House press corps, who would collectively scream at |
| 0:22.1 | Joe Biden, if he misstated a single word, never mind the law, never mind the Constitution, |
| 0:27.0 | take it in stride when Donald Trump spews madness like that. Imagine what the country would |
| 0:34.7 | have said about a president who announced he was no longer going to spell |
| 0:38.9 | the words, Supreme Court, with a capital S and a capital C, because he's mad at the Supreme Court. |
| 0:48.9 | Prior to Donald Trump, that would have been taken as a conclusive indicator of madness and an incapacity to serve |
| 0:56.4 | as president. But at 7.06 a.m. today, Donald Trump posted the Supreme Court. We'll be using |
| 1:03.3 | lowercase letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect, exclamation point. If I tried that in the third grade at St. Brendan's Elementary |
| 1:14.0 | School, I would have gotten in trouble for conduct beneath the dignity of a third grader. |
| 1:21.0 | But the White House Press Corps accepts it. They have to accept it because the avalanche of madness |
| 1:26.9 | is just too big. It's too big to |
| 1:28.7 | catch up with every piece of it and react to it the way it should be reacted to. But if the next |
| 1:35.0 | president has a typo in a social media post, you can bet the White House press corps will jump |
| 1:40.3 | all over it the way they always used to. Joe Biden's decision-making as president, |
| 1:46.8 | which is what the job really is, it's decision-making. It's not athleticism, was as impressive |
| 1:52.8 | as any president in history. And Donald Trump's decision-making is the worst, by far. Voters seem to recognize that now with new polls |
| 2:04.8 | showing that if the Biden versus Trump election were held today, Donald Trump would lose. |
| 2:10.0 | Donald Trump is the only president demented or stupid enough to believe that the president |
| 2:15.1 | has the unlimited power to set tariffs. Every other president knew what the Constitution says about that. Donald Trump doesn't know what the president has the unlimited power to set tariffs. Every other president |
| 2:18.0 | knew what the Constitution says about that. Donald Trump doesn't know what the Constitution is |
| 2:22.7 | or where to find one, and would be completely flummoxed by the prose style of the Constitution |
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