President-elect Donald Trump’s exclusive interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker — his first network TV sitdown since winning the election — was a mixed affair. At times, he tried to sound almost measured: Trump told the “Meet the Press” host that he would work with Democrats to find a way to preserve Dreamers’ legal status. He said he would not ban abortion medication, fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell or order the prosecutions of his political opponents.
But as always, Trump’s more aggressive impulses inevitably got the better of him. Not long after promising not to go after his foes, Trump said the members of the House select committee on Jan. 6 “committed a major crime and they should go to jail.” He told Welker that he would pardon rioters from the Capitol attack on his first day in office. And echoing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, he flirted with the debunked theory that vaccinations are responsible for increasing diagnoses of autism.
Arguably the most significant moment of all, though, came near the beginning of the wide-ranging interview. During the campaign, Trump proposed tariffs of 10-20% on all imports — and 60% on goods from China. Welker asked whether he could “guarantee” that Americans won’t pay higher prices under those tariffs.
“I can’t guarantee anything,” Trump replied. He noted (correctly) that his first term saw low inflation, even as he implemented new tariffs. But those tariffs were on a much smaller scale. Multiple studies project his sweeping new proposal would cost Americans hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year.
The significance of inflation isn’t lost on Trump. “I won on two things,” he told Welker later in the interview. “I won on the border, and I won on groceries.” And yet even Trump, who has built a career on bluffing and promising the impossible, couldn’t pretend that his plan to avoid future price increases will work. Inflation indicators show annual increases of under 3%, well below the spike in the middle of Joe Biden’s presidency. But companies from Walmart-sized conglomerates to small businesses are already warning that they may have to raise prices. And just as Trump got credit for the low inflation in his first term, he will take the blame for any price hikes in his second.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
