The Ben Mulroney Show - Trump, tariffs and tantrums

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Wyatt Sharpe, Host of The Wyatt Sharpe Show (Thursdays on @thenewsforum) joins Ben from the White House, moments after the press briefing from President Trump. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Always happy to share the camera, the microphone, and this space with my good friend who's down in Washington right now, a 17-year-old journalist, Wyatt Sharp, the host of the White Sharp Show. Wyatt, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. always great to be here. So what do you are, were you down there, um, specifically to go to the White House and, and, and, uh, like what, why? Because you're down there on a very fortuitous day. Yeah. So I'm speaking at a conference tomorrow and I was kind of planning. I came here with one of my friends from high school of all things. And, uh, I was kind of thinking, you know, today we'll go

see some of the different tourist attractions. And then of course, the news broke about the Supreme court ruling. And so went to the White House and started, um, um, like just kind of seeing what was going to happen. And then words started breaking about the fact that the president was going to come out and give some remarks and do a briefing and take some questions. And so literally it all moved very fast. And I was there as he was taking questions. And it was very surreal. Well, I'll bring everybody up to speed if they don't know.

We have been in Canada waiting with bated breath for the Supreme Court ruling on whether or not Donald Trump's Liberation Day tariffs were in fact permissible under law. and they came down and ruled as, I think, a lot of people expected that no, in fact, he does not have that power. And what that means depends on, I guess, Donald Trump's mood in any given moment. Let's listen to a little bit of his initial reaction. The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing. And I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what. what's right for our country. You pointed all of them, man.

If they don't agree with you, it's kind of on you. And before we get back into it, Wyatt, let's listen to number three and number four. All of those tariffs remain. They all remain. I don't know if you know that or not. They all remain.

We're still getting them. And we will after the decision. I guess there's nobody left to appeal to. Therefore, effective immediately. immediately all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs. They're existing. They're there. Remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect.

Today I will sign in order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122 over and above our normal tariffs already being charged. So, so why, he's just making life. 10% more expensive for Americans. Yeah, and it's interesting because just to kind of tell people and set the context, even of what happened here, this was kind of tariffs that were being justified by AEPA, which is the International Economic Emergency Powers Act.

And what the Supreme Court ruled today, six to three, was that that is what is unconstitutional. And so Trump's rhetoric now and his line of reasoning is, well, I can start to impose tariffs. I'll impose global tariffs. I'll do all of these things because it's not under this Aipa framework that it was before. And so that's kind of where people are drawing the line here as it relates to why Trump is now coming out and imposing more tariffs and doing more things. But one of the things that I was hoping

to ask him about that I didn't get the chance to was just about what this means for Kuzma, for the relationship with Canada. Because as you point out, you know, when you have members of, you know, your own government, Supreme Court justices that you appointed like Amy Coney-Barratt, who is among the most conservative of those on the Supreme Court, many people might say, you know, when you have those types of people starting to speak out against you, it really comes down to a question of the movement is no longer united behind using tariffs as leverage to try and, you know, win over countries like Canada, I guess make Canada pay their fair share. And why? We also saw it last week when a number of his GOP allies in the House of Representatives broke from the orthodoxy to vote against his right to claim the power to tariff. So there are splinters here that are suggesting that, you know, his lame duck, the lame duck presidency may be beginning right now. Yeah, and I mean, you're seeing that on a whole whole host of issues.

You know, you can talk about the Epstein files and I have a bunch of people who have been speaking out against him on that too. And I think to your point, a lot of that is because after the 2026 midterms, Trump is going to be a lame duck president and he's not going to have as much influence over people. You know, the threat of primary and people won't be as relevant anymore coming from someone. like Donald Trump. And he was asked about it, as you point out, the Republicans in the House who voted against what you wanted them to do. But his response was, well, there's only three of them, so therefore, you know, it's not relevant and it's not important. And, you know, that might work in some cases, but the fact that the House right now is a very slim majority for the Republicans, those three seats are seats that are important to him and to Republicans. Look, no one would have

dared cross him a little while ago. And I don't, I don't think that this vote in the House of representatives, which would have to go to the Senate, receive two-thirds of a majority in order to avoid his veto. I think it's more symbolic than anything, but the symbol of what it is is significant. The fact that there are even, there's even a handful of Republicans who dared cross him on something as significant as his power to tariff, I think speaks volumes. But therein lies the issue as well, Wyatt, because here was a, this was a president comfortable in his power. And now the call is coming from

within the House, from Republicans on the Supreme Court, from Republicans in the House. And I don't know what a leader like Donald Trump is likely to do in these circumstances. When he's happy,

when he's fat and happy, he's sitting there comfortable. You expect him, you expect him to move a little bit. I'm expecting him to flail now. And I don't know what that looks like. And that could be concerning. I mean, I'll tell you in many respects what it looks like is what he did in the press briefing.

He was asked about whether or not he regrets appointing them. You know, it's this idea that if you break from him on one specific issue that you don't agree with him on, all of a sudden you get painted as this rhino, as this anti-Trump level Republican. And that's really become kind of cancerous, so to speak, to the Republican movement in the sense that now, if you don't agree with it, you're automatically attributed as not caring about unity within the party. And I think in the context of Republicans and what they've been saying over the Supreme Court ruling, it comes down to the fact that many of their constituents are demanding that they speak out against the tariffs because the small business owners are starting to see the effects in their

districts. And so now members of Congress are playing this balance of do we fight for our constituents or do we fight for Donald Trump? And increasingly so, more and more of them are saying, fighting for our constituents. And Wyatt, correct me if I'm wrong, but this decision by the Supreme Court effectively takes away his power to tariff countries generally. He's got the ability to tariff sectors, but not countries. So how then does he then claim the power to tariff the globe? If the globe is made up of countries, I don't understand how you can do that. Exactly. And it's, yeah, exactly. And I think the other thing is a lot of his tariffs right now the white house has been using as leverage with respect to in canada's case using it so that canada can live up to its 2% GDP commitment with respect to

China he has said in you know previous instances that he is using it some making sure basically that china cares more about the national security and doesn't commit these sorts of human rights violations so if you don't have the leverage over countries in the context of what his tariffs were previously intended to do then all of a sudden that reduces their impact and then to your point about the global 10% tariff to me that suggests that they're trying to override the Supreme Court ruling in some ways. They feel as if maybe the Supreme Court ruling is irrelevant or is invalid. And, you know, that's really what the White House has been saying for the majority of today is that they don't really care what the Supreme Court is saying. They don't really care what

these Republicans in the House or in the Senate are saying. They're saying, we're the president, we're the executive branch of government. We have the final say, we can make the decision. And look, it's going to be interesting to see what the reaction is inside the United States. there are, these tariffs were paid. Obviously, Canada doesn't pay the tariff. Just like, you know, I thought of Mexico was going to pay the wall. Canada doesn't pay the tariffs. Companies and individuals within the United States have to pay those things.

And if he doesn't voluntarily refund that money, people will seek redress in the courts. Yeah, for sure. And so to that end, because right now you have a lot of international organizations who are saying, you know, we want refunds and countries even who are saying we want refunds. Because the United States had 100,000. $175 billion worth of revenue that came in from these tariffs. And so all of a sudden now the question is can the United States profit off of something that has been deemed as unconstitutional? And obviously people are saying that the answer to that is no.

And so refunds become the obvious answer. Whether or not that happens is still hypothetical, but certainly people are arguing for it and we'll see where that goes. Have you ever told a lie? Are you serious? Wasn't lying part of the job description of CIA? On executive producer Dick Wolf and the team behind FBI. A new partner.

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