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Sowell Exposes WOKE Media’s Anti-Trump Strategy || Thomas Sowell Reacts
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Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have
coined a new term called the taco trade.
They're saying Trump always chickens out
on your tariff threats, and that's why
markets are higher this week. What's
your response to that? I kick out.
Chicken out. Oh, isn't that chicken out?
I've never heard that. You mean because
I reduced China from 145% that I set
down to 100 and then down to another
number and I said you have to open up
your whole country and because uh I I
gave the European Union a 50% tax uh
tariff and they called up and they said
please let's meet right now. Please
let's meet right now. And I said okay
I'll give you till Janine. I actually
asked them I said what's the date?
because they weren't willing to meet.
And after I did what I did, they said,
"We'll meet anytime you want." And we
have an end date of July 9th. You call
that chickening out. Six months ago,
this country was stone cold dead. We had
a dead country. We had a country people
didn't think it was going to survive.
And you ask a nasty question like that.
Uh it's called negotiation. But don't
ever say what you said. One of the most
dangerous illusions of our time is the
belief that we can substitute ridicule
for reason and expect to remain a free
people. The modern age has traded the
discipline of reason debate for the
fleeting thrill of viral memes. Ideas
are no longer judged by their evidence,
but by their ability to capture
attention. In a world where attention is
the new currency, facts are buried
beneath slogans and truth is drowned out
by the clamor of clever images. This
intellectual decline is nowhere more
evident than in the political left's
obsession with anti-Trump memes
epitomized by the taco meme, short for
Trump always chickens out. This meme
born from a recent interview where
President Trump defended his trade
negotiations with China and the European
Union accuses him of backing down from
tariff threats. But this is not humor.
It is propaganda in the spirit of Joseph
Goby who understood that a lie repeated
often enough can masquerade as truth.
The task today is to dismantle this
tactic with facts, expose its
consequences, and make the case for
restoring discourse grounded in evidence
and reason. The taco meme emerged after
President Trump discussed his
administration's trade policies,
particularly tariffs aimed at addressing
imbalances with China and the EU. of
these tariffs intended to protect
American industries and reduce a trade
deficit that reached $419 billion
dollars with China in 2018. According to
the US Census Bureau are contentious.
Critics on the left seizing on moments
where Trump delayed or adjusted tariff
plans coined taco to portray him as
lacking resolve. Newsweek reported on
May 28th that the meme spread rapidly
online, featuring caricatures of Trump
as a taco or a chicken. Wall Street
traders, as noted by the New York Times
on May 29th, even adopted the term
tackle trade to describe market bets on
tariff delays, sparking rallies. This is
not a justest. It is a calculated effort
to shape public perception through
mockery rather than substance. Boomer
can illuminate truth or puncture
pretense, but when weaponized to obscure
facts and derail policy debate, it
becomes propaganda. The taco meme is not
a critique. It is a caricature designed
to undermine Trump's policies without
engaging their merits. As I wrote in
Intellectuals and Society, the power of
a vision is that it obviates the need to
think. The taco meme is such a vision, a
simplistic narrative that shortcircuits
thought and replaces evidence with
emotion. This tactic echoes Gerbal's
1930s principle that a lie repeated
often enough becomes believed. Bypassing
the complexities of trade policy to
cement an image of weakness. To grasp
why this matters, consider the economic
realities the meme
ignores. Tariffs, as I explained in
basic economics, involve tradeoffs. They
can protect domestic industries by
raising foreign goods costs, but they
also increase consumer prices and risk
retaliatory barriers. The Yale Budget
Lab estimated in 2025 that Trump's
tariffs could cost households
$3,800 annually with the poorest losing
$1,700. Significant burdens. Yet, the
meme sidesteps these costs and the
context. China's trade practices,
including currency manipulation and
intellectual property theft, cost
American firms $600 billion annually per
a 2019 US Trade Representative report.
Trump's tariff threats, as he explained,
a leverage to secure concessions like
the 2020 phase 1 trade deal, which
boosted US agricultural exports to China
by 12.5 billion, according to the USDA.
Whether these tactics succeed is
debatable, but debate requires data, not
derision. The left's reliance on means
reflects a broader intellectual failure.
In the vision of the anointed, I argue
that the self-
congratulatory elite dismiss opposing
views without scrutiny, believing their
moral vision trumps reality. The taco
meme exemplifies this. It does not
refute tariffs with economic models like
the 6% consumer price increase caused by
the Smoot Holly tariff act of 1930 which
deepened the Great Depression by
slashing global trade 14%. It does not
compare Trump's tariffs to the Obama era
Trans-Pacific Partnership which aimed to
counter China but faltered on labor and
environmental issues. Instead, it mocks
appealing to emotions over reason. This
is intellectual junk food, addictive,
empty, and corrosive to the body
politic. Consider a lesson from the
1930s when radio broadcasts spread
simplistic slogans to sway public
opinion. Much like today's memes, Father
Charles Cochland, a popular radio
priest, used catchy phrases to vilify
bankers and politicians, bypassing
economic realities like the Smoot Holly
tariff acts 6% price hike that deepened
the Great Depression. The lesson was
clear. Perception amplified by media can
trump reality. Today, the taco meme,
mocking Trump's trade negotiations with
China, plays a similar role. On
platforms like X, users parrot the
meme's claim that Trump chickens out.
Yet, few can site the $419 billion China
trade deficit or the 2020 phase 1 deals
122.5 billion boost to US farm exports.
This is not discourse. It is
indoctrination masquerading as humor,
substituting laughter for the hard work
of thinking. Uh, this tactic has
historical parallels. In the 1930s, Nazi
Germany used caricatures to dehumanize
opponents, bypassing debate with images
that stuck in the public's mind. During
China's cultural revolution, slogans
like smash the fours incited mobs to
destroy libraries and lives, not because
they were true, but because they were
catchy. The taco meme operates
similarly, reducing Trump to a
caricature to dismiss his policies
without analysis. This is not to equate
the left with Nazis or Mauists. Such
comparisons are sloppy, but to highlight
a shared method, repetition and imagery
over reason. The consequences are
profound. Rational discourse is the
foundation of a free society. When means
replace arguments, we lose the ability
to evaluate policies. Tariffs are
complex. I've criticized them, warning
in the past that they risk a global
trade war, much like Smoo Holly's
fallout. My critique rests on evidence.
Smooth Holly's 6% price hike and 14%
trade drop or modern data like Yale's
$3,800 household cost estimate. The taco
meme ignores such evidence, sidest
stepping Forbes reports from 2025 that
60% tariffs on China could cost US
farmers billions or the Guardian's April
13th analysis of a potential
43% iPhone price hike. It mocks robbing
the public of critical thinking tools.
In today's polarized climate, serious
policy debates are drowned out by the
noise of memes. A news poll from April
5th found 25% of Republicans view
Trump's tariff policies as erratic,
while most Democrats reject them
outright. Yet, the discussion unfolds
not in policy forums, but on social
media, where taco memes caricature
Trump's trade negotiations with China.
This echoes the 1930s when newspaper
cartoons mocked Herbert Hoover's
economic policies, ignoring the Smooth
Holly tariff acts 6% price hike that
crippled global trade. Then, as now,
perception shaped by simplistic imagery
trumped reality. The real question is
not what trade policy is best, but who
gets to decide? Reasoned citizens or the
viral mob? Memes like taco make that
choice for you. Substituting laughter
for evidence and consent consider
another historical
parallel. Nixon's wage and price
controls in the
1970s. As an economist then I saw how
well-intentioned policies caused
shortages and inflation. Gas lines
stretched for blocks and grocery shelves
emptied. The public was swayed by
slogans, not economics. Today, memes
play that role. Another news report
noted AI generated memes mocking tariff
hit Americans, amplifying emotion over
facts. This is regression to a time when
rhetoric trumped reason. Some claim
memes are harmless, engaging young
people in politics, but engagement
without substance is hollow. At the
University of Chicago under Milton
Freriedman, we learn to question
assumptions and demand evidence. A meme
might spark a conversation, but it ends
it by reducing issues to sound bites.
The left's memes are about control, not
dialogue, creating narratives that drown
out data like the $600 billion cost of
Chinese trade practices or the 12.5
billion in farm exports from the 2020
trade deal. This mirrors past leftist
tactics in black rednecks and white
liberals. I argued that cultural
patterns, not systemic oppression, often
explain outcomes. The left's mean
culture is a pattern, prioritizing
emotion over evidence. They avoid
questions about whether Trump's tariffs
reduce the $419 billion China trade
deficit. They want you to laugh and move
on, much like terms like deplorables
dismiss millions without engagement.
Intellectuals bear much blame.
Intellectuals in society, I wrote that
they promote visions flattering their
superiority while ignoring consequences.
The taco meme uh spread by politicians
and journalists assumes the public is
too dim for policy debates, offering a
taco instead. And as I've said, the
problem isn't that Johnny can't read.
The problem isn't even that Johnny can't
think. The problem is that Johnny
doesn't know what thinking is. He
confuses it with feeling. Memes appeal
to feelings, undermining policy
engagement. Another story comes to mind.
In the 1980s, I debated a leftist on
affirmative action. He cited injustice
without data. I countered with evidence.
Blackowned businesses thrived in the
1940s under free markets, not quotas, as
historian Robert Higgs
documents. The audience cheered his
passion, but facts were on my side.
Today, memes are the new emotional
appeal, drowning out data like the $600
billion cost of Chinese trade practices
or the 2020 trade deals export gains.
The tariff debate deserves better. If
you oppose Trump's tariffs, argue the
economics, show how they raise prices,
as the Guardian did, noting a 43% iPhone
price hike risk. Compare them to the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, but do not
mock. Plato warned that a society led by
rhetoric over reason courts folly. In
this day and age, social media is our
agora and memes are the loudest voices.
The solution is not censorship. Freedom
of speech is vital, even when misused.
The solution is to demand more of
ourselves. When a meme like taco
appears, ask what it hides. Seek data.
Business insiders tariff cost estimates,
the New York Times's market analysis,
Forbes's warnings about farm losses.
Engage arguments, not images. As I wrote
in a conflict of
visions, the great evils of the world,
war, poverty, and crime, for example,
are seen in completely different terms
by those with the constrained and the
unconstrained
visions. The left's unconstrained
vision, embodied in means, imagine
slogans solve
problems. The constrained vision demands
evidence and reason. In closing,
consider this from the vision of the
anointed. When people are committed to a
vision, it is not just a matter of
evidence no longer being relevant. They
do not even want to hear a contrary
voice. Calm, reasoned, and relentless.
If we surrender to means laughter, we
risk a future where policy is decided
not by facts, but by the loudest joke.
The choice is ours. Think slowly or
laugh quickly. The consequences will
shape our nation.
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