Did Larry Kudlow somehow get access to Trump's phone?

We know not. But, on hearing this, Steve Forbes, Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer broke into the "Hallelujah" chorus of Handel's "Messiah."

"Amen," they thundered in The New York Times.

Trump should declare "total trade disarmament" to be national policy and make free trade his "legacy" to America. Such a proclamation, they wrote, would assure Trump the "moral high ground" in the global debate and transform him from "evil disrupter of international commerce to potential savior."

For free trade is always and ever a "win-win for trading partners."

To read the Times op-ed is to appreciate that what we are dealing with here is an ideology, a political religion, a creed, a cult.

For consider the fruits of free trade policy during the last 25 years: the frozen wages of U.S. workers, $12 trillion in U.S. trade deficits, 55,000 factories lost, 6 million manufacturing jobs gone, China surpassing the U.S in manufacturing, all causing a backlash that pushed a political novice to the Republican nomination and into the presidency.

To maintain a belief in the superiority of free trade to economic patriotism, in the face of such results, is to recognize that this belief system is impervious to contradictory proof.

Still, the enduring enthusiasm of free trade zealots is not the only sign that GOP globalists, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing, are looking to a post-Trump era to resurrect their repudiated dogmas.

In USA Today, Jeffrey Miron, director of economic studies at the libertarian flagship think tank Cato Institute, wrote last week:

"The solution to America's immigrant problems is open borders. … Open borders means no walls, fences, screenings at airports, ICE … deportations, detention centers or immigration courts."

And what would happen after we declare open borders?

"Immigrants will not flood into America. … Crime will not skyrocket. … Even if values and culture change, so what? … Who says America's current values — some of them deeply evil — are the right ones?"

Bottom line for Cato's Miron: If we throw open America's borders and invite the world to come in and to remake who we are as a nation, "Think about the money we could save and make."