President Donald Trump drilled into a reporter over a question on tariffs on Thursday, telling him that he had to spend his first term "fighting lunatics like you." (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Without missing a beat, the president shot back: "Yeah, because in my first term, I was fighting lunatics like you who were trying to do things incorrectly and inappropriately to a president that was duly elected."
"And we did do certain tariffs in the first term," he continued. "If you look at China, China, we took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China."
He also said that the COVID-19 pandemic also played a factor in his decision to not emphasize tariffs as much in his first term.
"When Covid came the last thing I was going to do is tell France and Italy and Spain and a couple of other countries that we're going to hit you with tariffs," he explained. "We had to fight the Covid situation when that came."
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President Donald Trump (R) shakes hands with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (L) following their meeting in Turnberry, southwest Scotland on July 27, 2025. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
"We are agreeing that the tariff straight across for automobiles and everything else will be a straight-across tariff of 15%," Trump said.
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"So, we have a tariff of 15%. We have the opening up of all of the European countries, which I think I could say were essentially closed. I mean, you weren't exactly taking our orders. You weren't exactly taking our agriculture," he added, addressing von der Leyen.
Von der Leyen said Europe will also purchase $150 billion worth of U.S. energy as part of the deal, in addition to making $600 billion in other investments into the U.S.
Fox News Digital's Anders Hagstrom and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-clashes-reporter-over-tariffs-citing-pandemic-fighting-lunatics