WASHINGTON— In what historians are already calling the most unhinged White House press conference since the last time he held one, a furious President Donald Trump took to the podium on Friday to address the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his emergency tariffs. It went well. For comedy fans.
Hours after the nation’s highest court ruled 6-3 that his tariff regime was, in fact, illegal, Trump stood before the press corps not to concede, but to prove that if you can’t use the tariff hammer, you can just threaten to burn down the whole hardware store .
Flanked by silent aides who looked like they were calculating how quickly they could update their LinkedIn profiles, Trump began by praising the three justices who voted for him—Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh—for their “Strength, Wisdom, and Love of our Country,” before turning his fire on the other six, who he suggested were treasonous puppets controlled by mysterious forces .
“I am ashamed of certain Members of the Court,” Trump said, squinting at the teleprompter as if it had personally betrayed him. “They are fools, they are lapdogs for the Radical Left, and frankly, an embarrassment to their families” . He did not specify if this embarrassment included Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, the two justices he personally appointed who voted against him, but the implication was clear: they are no longer invited to Mar-a-Lago .
The Logic of a Mad King
The highlight of the hour-long tirade came when the President attempted to explain the legal absurdity of the ruling as he saw it. In a moment of pure stream-of-consciousness rage, Trump threw his hands up and exclaimed that the Court had tied his hands in the most ridiculous way possible.
“To show you how ridiculous the opinion is, the Court said that I’m not allowed to charge even $1 DOLLAR to any Country,” he said, his voice dripping with disbelief. “But I am allowed to cut off any and all Trade or Business with that same Country, even imposing a Foreign Country destroying embargo” .
He leaned into the microphone, delivering the kicker with the gravity of a man announcing a moon landing: “So I’m allowed to destroy the country, but I can’t charge them a little fee” .
Political analysts sat stunned, trying to parse the President’s new “Scorched Earth or Small Fee” doctrine of foreign policy. “It’s actually a fascinating insight into his worldview,” said one constitutional expert from behind a pile of aspirin. “In his mind, total economic annihilation is a perfectly reasonable alternative to a modest surcharge. It’s like a mob boss saying, ‘Pay me a $5 protection fee or I’ll blow up your building.’ And the Court said, ‘Well, you can’t ask for the $5, but you can definitely bring the dynamite.'”
The “Dancing” Enemy
Trump assured the American people that while the ruling was a disaster, he had a plan. He warned that foreign countries that have been “ripping us off for years” were currently “dancing in the streets” celebrating the court ruling .
“They are so happy, and they’re dancing in the streets, but they won’t be dancing for long. That I can assure you,” he said, implicitly threatening to cut the music and serve alcohol poisoning to the entire global economy .
He then revealed that, actually, the ruling was a secret gift. Citing a dissent from Justice Kavanaugh, Trump announced that the decision had made him “more powerful and crystal clear” . To prove it, he announced he would immediately impose a new 10% global tariff using a different, obscure law—Section 122—which no president has ever used before, because it’s specifically meant for balance-of-payments deficits and expires after 150 days .
“It’s very simple,” Trump said, waving a piece of paper. “I can embargo, I can do anything I want. This makes it easier” .
The Hit List
When asked who specifically he was mad at, Trump offered a wide-ranging list of enemies that included: the “Democrats on the Court,” unspecified “Foreign Interests,” “RINOS,” a “political movement that is far smaller than people would think,” and the *entire continent of Europe, which he claimed had “gone woke” .
He also took a moment to blast Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as “very incompetent,” because nothing says “economic stability” like attacking the head of the central bank moments after a major trade ruling .
As the press conference lurched toward the 60-minute mark, Trump confirmed he was also considering a “limited strike” on Iran, bringing the total number of countries threatened during the event to approximately 197 .
He concluded by thanking the farmers, claiming he gave them $12 billion from tariff money, and promising that the United States, currently the “hottest anywhere in the World,” would now take a “different direction” .
As he walked off stage without taking questions—because who needs questions when you have answers—aides scrambled to figure out how to draft an executive order allowing the U.S. to destroy specific countries while technically charging them $0.00.
The Dow Jones, which had initially spiked on the Supreme Court news, reportedly began to sweat .