1. United States
2. Mont.
3. Letter

Your colleague is a moron. Senator Kennedy,   You know better. That is what makes this worse.   On Fox News, you claimed Trump’s tariffs have put us in “uncharted waters” regarding inflation. That is not true, and you know it. Either you have never studied history, or you think the American people are too ignorant to remember the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the economic disaster that followed.   Let us take a little trip down memory lane. The Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 jacked up tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods. The result? Every major U.S. trading partner retaliated with tariffs of their own. Global trade plummeted, American exports collapsed, and what might have been a bad recession turned into the Great Depression. Unemployment skyrocketed. The cost of living soared. Businesses shut their doors because they could no longer afford raw materials.   This is not “uncharted waters.” We have been here before, and the economic wreckage is well-documented. The only difference is that back then, people could at least claim ignorance. Today, you do not have that excuse. Economists across the spectrum agree: tariffs raise prices, hurt consumers, and provoke trade wars that make everyone poorer. Trump’s tariffs are no different. They are not a bold new idea—they are a failed policy, reheated and served with a side of bad faith.   And yet, instead of speaking honestly about these facts, you lean into your Foghorn Leghorn routine—the same phony, slow-talking, chicken-fried schtick you trot out every time you need to dodge accountability. It is not cute. It is not folksy. It is a calculated insult to the intelligence of the American people.   You went to Oxford, but you pretend to be just another simple country boy, tossing out cornpone wisdom while slipping bald-faced lies into the conversation. It is political theater at its most cynical. You know your audience will take your words at face value, and you know you are misleading them. That makes it worse than ignorance—it is deliberate deception.   Enough with the act. The American people do not need another politician playing dumb while making policies that hurt working-class families. If you really cared about them, you would tell them the truth: Tariffs do not help the economy—they tank it. They are just another tax, one that lands hardest on the very people you claim to represent.   So, Senator, drop the routine. Cut the cartoon nonsense and start doing your job.