WASHINGTON — An apparent prankster dialed into C-SPAN Friday using President Trump’s famous pseudonym “John Barron” and sporting a remarkably family accent called into the public access channel to rant about the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling.
Impersonating Trump’s brash Queens accent, the caller described himself as a Republican from Virginia and slammed the Supreme Court’s decision to take a sledgehammer to the president’s tariff agenda.
“This is the worst decision you ever have in your life, practically,” Barron vented. “But this is a terrible decision.”
“And you have Hakeem Jeffries, who, he’s [sic] a dope, and you have Chuck Schumer, who can’t cook a cheeseburger. Of course, these people are happy. Of course, these people are happy, but true Americans will not be happy.”
C-SPAN host Greta Brawner quickly interrupted and cut the caller off, switching to others.
The White House did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Early on in Trump’s first term, it emerged that he had used pseudonyms such as “John Barron” to call up journalists in attempts to frame certain narratives, particularly about his net worth. Audio from those calls showed that “John Barron” sounded remarkably like Trump.
C-SPAN had been fielding calls from viewers across the country in reaction to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs.
Trump had been using IEEPA, a statute that never mentioned the word tariff and has never been used by a president to impose duties to slap levies on foreign imports at will.
The president still has other powers that he is now turning to for tariffs, but those avenues are much more cumbersome to use than IEEPA, which he used to rake in some $133 billion in revenue as of December.
He has since moved to reimplement his 10% baseline tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which he later bumped up to 15%. Notably, Section 122 tariffs are limited to 150 days and need Congressional approval to get re-upped after that.
Shortly after the C-SPAN call, the real Trump took to the podium at the White House press briefing room and excoriated the Supreme Court.
“They’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs [Republicans in name only] and the radical left Democrats, and not that they should have anything at all to do with it. They’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” Trump fumed.
Friday’s decision was Trump’s most significant loss before the Supreme Court to date, and came despite his having appointed about a third of the bench.
