Trump Tariff Cold Open – SNL

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) took time on CNN Thursday evening to tear into Kevin Roberts, president of the far-right Heritage Foundation, for his refusal to condemn ex-Fox News personality Tucker Carlson for interviewing white nationalist Hitler sympathizer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

Roberts' claim that Fuentes and Carlson shouldn't be deplatformed has sparked a firestorm of anger and divided staffers within Heritage itself, fracturing the organization responsible for crafting President Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda. It wasn't until after days of controversy that he finally backtracked.

"Congressman, what — I don't understand why it's a difficult question at all," said anchor Anderson Cooper. "Shouldn't — I think all Republicans would condemn Nick Fuentes' hateful comments, full stop."

"Yeah, you'd think. But remember, Donald Trump invited him ... to Mar-a-Lago to have lunch with him and Kanye," said Kinzinger. "This is crazy. I mean, look, this is — there's always been, you know, we'd have Lincoln Day dinners, right? This is like the big fundraisers for the GOP. And there'd always be a weird table. And the weird table would always have 1 or 2 people that were kind of like Nazi-ish, I guess. And that firewall, for the most part, in the GOP, held where it's like, yeah, they may be considered to the right, but they're not part of us."

Now, however, he said, "It feels like that firewall is crumbling and you hear sometimes people on the right say, we have no enemies to the right. And what they're saying is anybody that is on the right, even as far as Nazism — we have no enemies, we have to make common cause. The ultimate enemy is the left and the liberals. And so the fact that it has taken Kevin, that Heritage Foundation president or chairman, whatever, as long as it has to condemn that is enough to say like that firewall is crumbling now."

"I'll give Ted Cruz something here for speaking out as quickly as they did on this. Some of them," added Kinzinger. "But this — this has to be burned right out of the party. And unfortunately, it's taking too long to do that."

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A significant number of President Donald Trump’s supporters may have reached their “breaking point” as costs continue to climb, according to a new poll from Politico published Saturday.

The poll found that the “typical” Trump supporter would be willing to pay $65 more per month in taxes if it meant supporting the president’s agenda. After the Democratic sweep in this week’s elections, however, Politico’s Jessica Piper argued that Trump’s policies – which some critics have blamed for the rising costs of goods and energy – had officially gone too far for Trump voters.

“The POLITICO Poll results are a reminder that — while many of Trump’s supporters have a reputation for intense loyalty — they also have a breaking point,” Piper wrote. “And Tuesday’s election results suggest that despite Republican voters’ willingness to pay a literal price for Trump’s policies, the Trump agenda to date may have pushed voters too far.”

Trump’s tariff policy in particular has seen the cost of goods soar, with Americans bearing the cost of the tariffs by as much as 55%, NBC News reported. Energy prices have also soared, increasing twice as fast as inflation since the COVID-19 pandemic, largely due to the Trump administration’s war on clean energy, and in spite of Trump’s pledge to slash energy prices “by half within 12 months.”

The Democratic candidates that clenched victory this week all ran on the issue of affordability, signaling an appetite among voters for politicians pledging to lower cost-of-living expenses. The messaging proved so successful that Trump himself has launched a new push to target affordability, while decrying Democrats’ attempts to advocate for affordability a “con job.”