Fox contributors, including one of the cable news channel’s top hosts, are now arguing that Donald Trump’s tariffs will make American men more manly and will solve what they call a “crisis in masculinity.”

Trump imposed tariffs — taxes on goods imported from other countries — last week. The tariffs started being implemented on Saturday and will finish going into effect tomorrow. The intent is to raise the prices of goods produced in other countries so that they are more expensive than the same goods produced in the U.S.

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The fallout tariffs is overwhelming all the other damage Donald Trump is causing
The strategy is to play the media by flooding the zone with outrages so many of them go unnoticed.

Along with the Trump administration’s attempts to deport undocumented workers and cut off funding for research, the total effect, conservatives argue, will be to force American citizens out of white-collar jobs in research and engineering and into blue-collar factory and agricultural jobs.

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This, the Fox contributors argued, will make American men more masculine since being a factory worker is more masculine than being a scientist.

“Could Trump’s tariffs be the ultimate testosterone boost?” co-host Greg Gutfeld said on Fox’s The Five. “You said in the green room that the crisis in masculinity began with the first male flight attendant. Care to elaborate, Jesse?”

The known first male flight attendant, according to Airships.net, was German zeppelin flight attendant Heinrich Kubis, who started his job in March 1912.

“It’s ‘stewardess,’ Greg,” co-host Jesse Watters scolded Gutfeld. “And they will always be stewardesses. Even if it’s a male flight attendant, I still say, ‘Stewardess!’ They don’t respond usually.”

“When you sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman,” he said as one of his co-hosts burst out laughing. “Studies have shown this. Studies have shown this!”

“And if you’re out working, like building robots like Harold [Ford], you are around other guys, you’re not around HR ladies and lawyers that gives you estrogen.”

It’s not clear what studies he’s referring to since sex hormones are not spread by spending time with others, and gender identity does not change even if one uses a computer a lot.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 54% of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s tariffs, which could explain the bizarre attempt to sell the tariffs to Fox’s viewers as a form of gender-affirming care for cis men. Tariffs increase the price of goods in the short term, and in the long term, they will make the U.S. less wealthy by stifling economic growth and forcing people into less efficient and lower-paying jobs.

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