Whatever you think about the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday on tariffs, the ruling was a blunt reality check for the Democrats, whose rhetoric about the high court has been vicious in recent years.
On CNN’s NewsNight, host Abby Phillip was walking through the financial fallout from a court ruling, citing a CBO report that found U.S. businesses absorb about 30% of import price increases, while consumers bear the remaining 70% — with the net effect pushing consumer prices up by roughly 95 percent of the domestically borne tariff costs.
Inflation has remained low and stable under President Donald Trump, but whatever. The left loves to push their narrative regardless of the facts.
Scott Jennings promptly called out her inconsistency.
"Well, which is it?" he said. "You said all of it was passed through to the consumers. You said that most of it was absorbed by some of the companies. It sounds like maybe it might be a little bit of both."
While Phillip suggested refunds should mirror how the tariffs were collected, Jennings predicted a bureaucratic nightmare, warning of massive sums of money at stake and years of litigation likely to follow. Then Jennings shifted gears entirely, and this is where things got interesting.
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"I'll just say, you know, politically, today, you know, it was a big breaking news day, but I just think we ought to acknowledge something," he said. "This is a properly functioning government today. The president of the United States, the head of the executive branch, made a policy decision. The Supreme Court, it renders legal opinions about these kinds of decisions, made a decision, they said, you can't do that. The president of the United States said, ‘Okay, I agree, and I will acknowledge your decision. I'm going to use a different statute to try to do what I want to do.’ This is properly functioning government."
He wasn't done. Jennings went straight at the media narrative that has dominated coverage of this Supreme Court for the past two years — the one that cast the court as essentially a rubber stamp for whatever Trump wanted.
"For every Democrat and every media person that has gone on for the last year or two about how this Supreme Court is a wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump, that it's not independent, that it does whatever he says to do, obviously, that narrative was obliterated today."
He drove it home: "So, to me, I thought this was actually — I thought the ruling was sound. I think the president is sound to try other statutes. And I think the narratives about the court not being independent and the president not obeying the court were totally blown up today."
🚨 HOLY CRAP! Scott Jennings just STUNNED the entire CNN panel on the Supreme Court with a straight truth nuke
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 21, 2026
"For every Democrat and every media person that has gone on for the last YEAR or two about how the Supreme Court is a 'wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump,' that… pic.twitter.com/o6hHdPQB87
How can you argue with that logic? You can’t. Democrats have become so obsessed with the narrative that the court has been a rubber stamp for Trump; they’ve literally considered packing the court because of this narrative. Frankly, the conservatives on the Supreme Court have shown far more independence than any of the leftists on the court.
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