'Belly of the beast': CNN panel spars over Trump giving himself new 'political pain point'

CNN commentators disagreed over President Donald Trump's economic threats to international business leaders.

The president repeated his false claims about the U.S. trade relationship with Canada and Europe in virtual remarks to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and former White House communications director Mike Dubke told "CNN This Morning" that his speech came right out of his winning campaign platform.

"I actually do think the rhetoric matters, and there is going to be some real-world impact here," said Dubke, who served several months under Trump in 2017. "Major corporations are going to look, 'What can we do to open up operations in the United States?' You're right about GM, but your, you know, Honda, BMW, all these other manufacturers make their SUVs in the United States, so all of this, and right to work states, but all of this does does matter. You know he's got a very strong 'made in America' platform, and that's what he's doubling down on, and he's taking it, you know, right into the belly of the beast at Davos."

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Kate Bedingfield, who held the same White House position under former president Joe Biden from 2021 to 2023, said we've heard these threats before.

"This is kind of a rerun," she said. "I mean, we saw a lot of this tough talk from him in his first administration. We saw a lot of promises about bringing manufacturing back to the United States, and it didn't really happen. "

Bedingfield mentioned Lordstown, Ohio, where Trump promised in his first term that industrial jobs were "coming back," but less than two years later the General Motors plant closed down, and his 2018 announcement of a Foxxcom plant in Wisconsin that remains largely undeveloped.

"The rhetoric is one thing, but the reality is another," Bedingfield said, "and I think, you know, threatening tariffs that are ultimately probably going to drive up prices for American consumers, that's going to create a real political pain point for him very quickly, and he's going to have to make decisions about whether he is whether the rhetoric is worth being, looking the American people in the eye and saying, you know, 'Prices are going up because of what I did,' and so I, you know, it's easy to it's easy to bluster in your virtual address to Davos in the second week of your presidency. But the reality of some of what he's proposing here will mean higher prices for people in the United States."

Dubke responded, saying that Trump was far more capable than he was in his first term.

"Just a really quick point on this, though," he said. "When is this happening? Like in the first administration, Trump 1.0, it was a year, a little later into the administration. He was getting his feet under him. This is now, what we're seeing is a confident Donald Trump, and we're seeing him straight out of the gate. What are we, five days into the presidency now? We are seeing him straight out of the gate, going to several of the places, as you point out, that this we've already seen this, but it was he was trying to figure it out in 1.0, [but] 2.0 – this is we're on steroids at the moment. We're just blasting through, you know, several of the plays that he ran four years ago."

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