Since President Donald Trump returned to office, Democrats and their allies in the media have hammered one message into the ground: President Trump's tariffs are a stealth tax on ordinary Americans dressed up as economic nationalism. Have you ever noticed that Democrats only seem to object to taxes when they don't get to write them?
For as long as I’ve been following politics, Democrats immediately brand any attempt to cut taxes as a “tax cut for the rich." Yet, in all honesty, they’ve never met a tax they didn’t like. Especially when they can tax regular people without them noticing, and that’s exactly what CNN’s Scott Jennings exposed during Wednesday night's broadcast of CNN's NewsNight, and the reaction from the leftists on the panel was a total meltdown.
What happened was that CNN anchor Abby Phillip expressed her opinion that tariffs “are taxes on Americans, not on other countries," Phillip said.
Jennings didn't dispute her but pointed out that “so are corporate income taxes."
And boy, did that cause a stir.
"You say taxes on corporations in the form of tariffs are passed on to consumers," he said. "Where do you think corporate income taxes go? On to consumers." He wasn't finished. If both tariffs and corporate income taxes ultimately burden consumers, Jennings wanted to know why one gets treated as a scandal and the other as a public good. So why not eliminate both?
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That's when things fell apart. Phillip insisted that the two weren't the same at all, and an increasingly incredulous Jennings asked her for specifics.
"What do you think corporate income taxes do?” he asked. “Where do you think it goes?"
"Income taxes do not raise prices on goods," Phillip replied. "Tariffs do."
According to Phillip and the rest of the Left, corporations just eat those costs and don’t try to maximize their profits.
"A tax is a tax," Jennings said.
Bakari Sellers jumped into the fray to call Jennings' position "patently absurd" without ever explaining why. But here's the problem: Neither Sellers nor Phillip ever even tried to explain how a corporate tax hike doesn't get passed on to consumers the exact same way a tariff does. Is there a real difference between the two, when it comes to who ultimately foots the bill? Spoiler alert: There isn't, and Jennings knew it before he ever asked the question.
🔥 WOW! Scott Jennings with the mic drop of a LIFE TIME to Abby Phillip's face on CNN
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 17, 2026
PHILLIP: Tariffs are destructive for consumers!
JENNINGS: Zero out corporate income taxes then! Why are certain taxes good and certain taxes bad? Because TRUMP did one and you do the other!… pic.twitter.com/xyahI5Z00l
This is what the Democrat Party does every time taxes come up. They love slapping new taxes on corporations because they think they're sticking it to the wealthy. In reality, that money doesn't come out of some corporate slush fund. It gets passed straight to the consumer as higher prices, exactly like Jennings said. Yet Democrats treat those same tax hikes as simply the price of doing business, while they treat Trump's tariffs like an act of economic sabotage.
The reality is Trump's tariff strategy is simple. The tariffs are meant as leverage, a way to pressure other countries into dropping their own tariffs and trade barriers so American goods can compete on a level playing field. Is that so much to ask? Should we let other countries take advantage of us? Trump doesn’t think so. Why would any patriotic American think so? The goal is more reciprocal, potentially tariff-free, trade.
If the left understood economics, they wouldn't be Democrats. But sadly, they're too invested in their radical agenda to care about the facts. Pretending that corporate income taxes don't result in costs being passed on to the consumer tells you just how blinded by their ideology the left really is.
