For the second time in a week, a Fox News personality went to bat to protect President Donald Trump from the fallout of the Supreme Court overturning his unpopular tariff policies, falsely reassuring viewers that they are not paying for Trump’s import tax scheme.

During two February 25 segments of Fox & Friends, co-host Lawrence Jones responded to criticism of Trump’s tariff policies by repeatedly (and falsely) telling viewers that the president’s critics were lying when saying his tariffs had cost American families money over the past year. His comments followed a segment last week wherein Fox host Harris Faulkner had wondered aloud whether foreign countries would seek refunds for tariffs they paid to the U.S. — before she was informed that tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers, not foreign exporters.

During today’s Fox & Friends segment, the hosts aired a portion of newly inaugurated Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s rebuttal to Trump’s State of the Union speech where she said that “everyday Americans are paying the price” of Trump’s tariffs and described his latest tariff proposal “another massive tax hike on you and your family.” Jones scolded Spanberger: “Just to be clear, what she said is 100% false,” claiming that “there has been zero inflation based on the tariffs” and that “you cannot say that it caused inflation on the American people.”

Later, Jones returned to the topic during a segment with pollsters Kellyanne Conway and Mark Penn, discussing a portion of Spanberger’s rebuttal when the governor noted that Trump’s “reckless trade policies have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs.” Jones responded that Spanberger's statement was “not true” and again added that tariffs had not been inflationary. Conway was even more direct, simply claiming, “Those are lies.”

Jones wrapped up his performative outrage by acting aghast that Spanberger would claim tariffs cost American families money. “To say it was inflationary, that it's costing you more money, the data doesn't support that, yet she told the people that,” he said.

Americans are absolutely paying the cost of Trump’s tariffs.

As economists and experts have repeatedly explained, foreign countries do not pay tariffs. Tariffs are import taxes paid by American consumers.

Trump massively increased tariff receipts compared to 2024, raising a record-breaking amount of tariff revenue in his first year in office. The money had to come from somewhere.

And last November, The Budget Lab at Yale estimated that Trump's tariff policies had at that point cost the average American family roughly $1,700. An analysis by the Joint Economic Committee's minority staff released just last week estimated that “American consumers overall paid more than $231 billion in tariff costs between February 2025 and January 2026, an average of roughly $1,745 per family.”

Far from misleading viewers with her speech, Spanberger actually did Trump a favor by rounding the cost of his tariffs down.

And this isn’t just a question about whether or not tariffs are generally inflationary (they are) or whether Trump’s tariffs have shown up in consumer prices (they have). This is about real costs that have been passed along to actual Americans as a result of Donald Trump illegally raising their taxes.