Jim, Trump’s press-conference statement actually makes more sense than the tweet he had been asked to comment on, which read, “If the Fed would cut, we would have one of the biggest Stock Market increases in a long time. Badly run and weak companies are smartly blaming these small Tariffs instead of themselves for bad management…and who can really blame them for doing that? Excuses!” If the problem is the Fed, then why aren’t the companies blaming it instead of the tariffs or their bad management? Trump was trying to work too many of his hobbyhorses into one post, and ended up with something convoluted.

Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor for National Review , a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute. @rameshponnuru