The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 11 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

By now you’ve heard that President Trump supposedly “paused” his tariffs. In reality, we still have a 10 percent tariff on most global imports; the tariffs with China are through the roof; and the trade war with China has gotten worse, causing markets to plunge once again. Fox News has been struggling to spin Trump’s so-called pause as some form of brilliant 11-dimensional chess. But then a Fox Business correspondent told the truth: Trump got spooked by the bond markets. This shattered Fox’s own spin.

Meanwhile, at Trump’s cabinet meeting Thursday, his top advisers offered extraordinarily unctuous flattery of him. Put this all together and we’re seeing a level of sycophancy toward the president that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. So today we’ve invited on the perfect guest to talk about what this all means, historian Nicole Hemmer, who’s written books on the right-wing media and on the Republican Party. Thanks so much for coming back on, Nicole.

Nicole Hemmer: Thanks so much for having me, Greg.

Sargent: Let’s start with this bizarre Fox episode. As Matt Gertz of Media Matters chronicled, Fox personalities have gushed with praise for the tariff pause. Sean Hannity called it “the art of the deal” and “a huge win for the president.” Jesse Watters said, “Trump created maximum leverage for himself.” Laura Ingraham called it “Trump’s 3D chess move”—3D seems low, actually. But then Fox senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino said, Wait a minute, the bond market forced Trump’s hand. Listen to this, also courtesy of Media Matters.

Charlie Gasparino (audio voiceover): If you have a mass sale of bonds, that means people are losing confidence in the U.S. economy on the ability to do deals with us. And from what I understand, this is what forced the hand of this 90-day reprieve.

Sargent: Nicole, I want to remind everyone here that this brilliant move that Fox personalities are crowing about undid Trump’s own policy—and by the way, only a little bit. The markets are down again as the magnitude of the trade war with China becomes clear. What do you make of all this?

Hemmer: It is fascinating to see Fox move from state TV to outright North Korean television. At this point, they’re just chasing whatever Trump does and trying to provide cover as much as possible. When the tariffs were in place, they were his manly tariffs, People were going to feel pain, but they were going to get better afterward. And now that the tariffs have been changed—not removed, but changed—it is this celebration of “the art of the deal.” And it will be interesting to see how often [Gasparino] is invited back on or whether his message attenuates some, because as Fox has gotten more and more [about] running cover for Trump, the amount of dissent allowed on the network has really dropped. So we will see how they chase this ball of the tariffs and the economy in coming days.

Sargent: I want to ask you one question about this, because Fox has actually in recent months been somewhat willing here and there to criticize the tariffs. The thing is this was in the run-up to the actual announcement of them. You had people like Maria Bartiromo really warning Trump, Don’t do this. You had others on Fox warning, Don’t do this, it’s going to be really hard to manage, and so forth. But now that they’ve done it, they can’t really say that anymore. They’ve got to flip over to saying it’s pure genius.

Hemmer: It’s such an interesting example of what happens when you are performing for an audience of one. When it’s still a potential policy, you understand that Donald Trump is watching and you have an opportunity to potentially sway him one way or the other; he watches tons of Fox News and absorbs quite a lot from the network. But once a policy is in place, he has to be a genius. He has to have made the right decision because, again, he’s still watching. And if you get out of line, then there will be retributions against the network.

Sargent: It’s true. By the way, I think we should point out that Fox, at least to some degree, is aligned with the plutocratic wing of the Republican Party. So when Fox News people are saying to Trump through the TV, Don’t do this, what they’re really saying is that major corporations are whispering in their ears, saying, This is going to........

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