Fox News’ propagandists are responding to the massive hole that President Donald Trump’s tax bill would reportedly blow in the federal deficit with the truly asinine complaint that such estimates don’t include revenues from the president’s tariffs. 

Jessica Tarlov, the Democratic co-host of Fox’s panel show The Five, triggered an uproar from her colleagues on Wednesday when she noted that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the House-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would produce an increase of “$2.4 trillion to the deficit” over 10 years, along with “$3.7 trillion in tax cuts, [and] 16 million, all in total between Medicaid cuts and Obamacare credit tax cuts, going off their health insurance.”

Several of Tarlov’s colleagues pushed back by following the well-honed right-wing strategy of attacking the CBO itself, with some denying that Trump’s agenda would increase the deficit at all. 

“When you add in the revenue also from the tariffs, the deficit is no longer an issue,” offered Katie Pavlich, adding that the CBO’s estimate, “many would say, is garbage.”

The hosts of Fox & Friends offered a similar assessment on Thursday morning.

“The CBO also to your point, Brian, they don't include the tariffs,” said Lawrence Jones.

“We made $69 billion in tariffs so far,” co-host Brian Kilmeade replied.

“That’s exactly right,” Jones said, adding that the CBO’s analysts are “not including that when they score this bill.”

On the one hand, it’s hilarious that Trump’s Fox sycophants are complaining that he isn’t getting enough credit for imposing a gargantuan tax increase on Americans that is triggering higher prices for consumers and layoffs at small businesses. 

On the other hand, how can anyone credibly assess the long-term budget implications of Trump’s tariffs given the chaotic way he has managed them over the last few months?

The CBO, responding to a request from House Democrats, published a June 4 analysis based on the tariffs Trump had imposed as of May 13. It found that “the increase in collections of tariffs would reduce primary deficits by $2.5 trillion” over 10 years.

Someone paid to be stupid on Fox’s airwaves could take that number, combine it with the $2.5 trillion increase in the deficit that CBO found the tax bill would cause over the same period, and call the impact of Trump’s policies on the deficit a wash. 

But it is wildly implausible to predict that the tariffs Trump had imposed as of May 13 would be maintained for 10 years — Trump has inflicted, increased, and paused tariffs with dizzying frequency over the first months of his tenure, hitting a variety of sectors as well as imports from every country. As Axios’ Neil Irwin put it, “the sheer unpredictability of this policy environment means it is less a one-time adjustment and more a constantly moving target” to respond to the shifting tariffs.

Indeed, Trump doubled the steel and aluminum tariffs CBO had assessed on June 4, meaning that its numbers were out of date on the same day it published its findings.

Meanwhile, the CBO’s score was calculated based on 30% tariffs on goods imported from China and 10% on most other countries. But the Trump administration is trying to negotiate with China, which has seen its tariff rise from 10% to 145% and then back to the current 30% over the course of his second term so far. The same is true for the countries with which Trump imposed sky-high “reciprocal” tariffs in April that he then “paused” at 10% to conduct negotiations.

It’s impossible to guess how these negotiations will resolve. We could see negotiations lead to agreements in which Trump agrees to lower tariffs on countries, leading to lower tax revenues. Or those negotiations could fall through and Trump could revert back to higher tariffs and higher tax revenues. The courts could find Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional, or members of Congress could suddenly decide they’d like to be part of a coequal branch of government and remove Trump’s power to unilaterally impose tariffs, leading to lower tariffs and lower tax revenues. What definitely won’t happen is the tariffs holding steady for 10 years — Trump can barely manage to keep them steady for 10 days. 

But Fox isn’t ready for a conversation about how their erratic god-king is callously mucking about with the economy; its Trumpy shills are just pinballing back and forth between praising the great achievement his tariffs will make possible and praising his “Art of the Deal” negotiations to remove them.