Hey, it's Will Salatan from the bulwark.

Remember this line from 1984?

Oceania was at war with Eurasia.

Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

That was Orwell's illustration of how an authoritarian government can rewrite the past.

And that's also how this authoritarian government, the one that Donald Trump

is building in the United States, is trying to rewrite our past. What I want to show you today

is what actually happened this month in the United States and how our government is gaslighting

us about what they did. On April 2nd, Trump announced

that he would impose tariffs, really big tariffs all over the world. Here's what he told corporate

investors on April 4th. He said, come build factories in the United States because I'll protect you with tariffs.

And those tariffs, he said, will never change. And in case the investors had any doubt,

Trump posted another message later that day. He said the tariffs were, quote, here to stay.

But there was a problem. It turned out that Trump's global trade war was a really bad idea. It was going to crash the economy. So people

started bailing out of the stock market and the bond market. And to stop the bleeding, a rumor went around that maybe Trump

would pause the tariffs for 90 days. But Trump said, no way. He said he wasn't even considering

that idea.

What should be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiations?

Well, we're not looking at that.

But then, he did.

On April 9th, a week after he announced the tariffs, he backed off.

On Truth Social, he wrote that he was authorizing a 90-day pause so other countries could

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