I’m not a big fan of Chris Wallace, but I admit that he sticks to the facts pretty closely. Anyway, this isn’t exactly Queen, but they do a nice fanboi rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody accidentally:
WALLACE: OK. You said on Friday that you were going to announce a trade coalition of the willing today, other countries that were going to join us in taking on China. Who are they?
KUDLOW: Well, I don’t (ph) — I didn’t make this announcement. I’m just observing.
WALLACE: No, no, you set on Friday, between 24 and 48 hours I’m going to announce the trade coalition of the willing. Do you have them?
KUDLOW: They are coming to us.
WALLACE: Who are they?
KUDLOW: Japan, Europe, Australia, Canada. They have come to us. The president actually —
WALLACE: They are not talking about tariffs.
KUDLOW: Sure they are.
WALLACE: No, they’re not.
KUDLOW: Sure they are.
Bismillah! No we will not let you go – let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go – let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go let me go
(And then they finish their homage to Queen….)
WALLACE: Japan said that they were going to join us in taking this issue to the world trade organization and to object to Chinese trade practices just as free traders have done for years.
KUDLOW: But if China maintains its third world status, as they have in the WTO, then other countries are free to take whatever actions they want.
WALLACE: But — if I just depress this, has any other country joined us in threatening tariffs if China doesn’t clean up its act?
KUDLOW: I can’t answer that. I don’t even want to answer that…
And on and on it goes. So here’s the take-away: there is no coalition of the willing (and the last time we hear that phrase during Chimpy’s Great Adventure, there was no coalition of the winning, either), and there is no strategy here. This is Comrade Stupid shooting his baby-lipped mouth off, and everyone trying to attribute eleventy-dimensional chess to it.
I don’t praise Fox or Wallace often, but this is one of those moments where it is earned.
