Hey everyone! Before I get started with today’s newsletter, I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be on medical leave for the next week or so, so this might be the only newsletter you get from me this week. I’ll be back and ready for action next week!
Twenty-one times between October 20 and November 7, 2018, President Donald Trump publicly promised that a 10 percent tax cut for the middle class was on its way. He promised the tax cut before the midterms, despite the fact that Congress had already adjourned and couldn’t even pass a bill doing that before the midterms if they wanted to.
On October 31, six days out from the elections, the White House put out a joint statement with the House Ways and Means Republicans promising to take up the tax cut bill (which didn’t yet exist) “at the start of the 116th Congress.”
But see, the 116th Congress hadn’t even been elected yet, meaning… you guessed it… people needed to vote for Republicans if they wanted the 10% tax cut Trump promised.
Then he got a bit more explicit. Two days before the election, on November 4, a reporter asked Trump about the status of the tax cut. His answer was… interesting. He said that the White House had been working with House Republicans, but he added an escape hatch: “Now, it could be that if we lose control of the House, that’s not going to happen.”
There it is.
The morning after Democrats retook the House, a reporter asked Trump about the status of the tax cut. He danced around it. Sixteen days later, he spoke at a rally in Houston where he said that the bill for the tax cuts was going to be introduced next week.
But that’s the last anyone heard of it. He stopped talking about it. There was never any bill. Nothing introduced before the election, nothing introduced during the lame duck session when Republicans still controlled Congress, and not in a year-end tax package written by Republicans weeks later. It was gone. I did some research on this and looked for any possible mention of this after that date, but I came up empty. I searched the American Presidency Project’s archive of Trump’s public comments for the phrase “10 percent tax cut,” between November 8, 2018 and January 20, 2021 — every rally, gaggle, interview, signing statement, and there was just… nothing. I’d hoped to find a specific moment where he dropped it, where he walked it back, or even where he said he was still working on it. But there was nothing. It was gone. It was a ruse to try to incentivize people to vote for Republicans.
That brings us to last Wednesday night in Dallas. About midway through Trump’s two-hour speech at the Republican midterm convention, Trump did it again:
“Here is my promise: If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000, very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders.”
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump dividend.”
This was a complete rehash of Trump 2018 midterm strategy of bribing voters.
There is no “Trump Dividend,” and nobody even knows where the money could come from
There’s no bill. There’s no Congressional Budget Office cost estimate. You can’t score a bill that doesn’t exist. When you see people point to the cost as being something in the ballpark of $1.2 trillion, that’s mostly just people in newsrooms multiplying the Census Bureau’s estimate of adult citizens by five thousand. But again, and this is really important to understand: it’s not real, and Trump is just dangling this in front of voters.
On Laura Ingraham’s show, Trump said that the cost of the checks would come from tariffs. Elsewhere, he said they’d be paid for by “growth.” On Truth Social, he said they’d be paid for by “Trillions of Dollars of Economic Development, Investment, and Pure SUCCESS.” JD Vance also went on Fox within the hour of the speech and said tariffs, and also that the checks would be for “the American middle class” rather than, as Trump had just said onstage, every adult citizen in the country.
It’s a con, guys.
He’s been telling people a check is coming since February 2025
The $5,000 is at least the fourth time he’s done something like this.
Remember the “DOGE dividend” from back in February of last year? That was also a promise to send everyone $5,000. That never materialized.
Then, on November 9, 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social that “a divident of at least $2,000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
Second was the tariff dividend. On November 9, Trump posted on Truth Social that “a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.” A week later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that these checks would go out “somewhere prior to, you know, probably the middle of next year,” meaning 2026. Well, the “middle of next year” came and went, and no checks had been sent out. Nobody got $2,000. Of course.
And then there was Trump’s plan for health care. In announcing in January his “Great Healthcare Plan,” Trump said, “The government is going to pay the money directly to you. It goes to you, and then you take the money and buy your own healthcare… the big insurance companies lose and the people of our country win.” Well, needless to say, the Great Healthcare Plan never materialized, and no money was sent “directly to you.”
Oh! And in addition to all of that, in addition to Trump’s latest “$5,000” promise, he’s also been talking about sending $500 ACA rebate checks to as many as a million people in 30 states before November 3rd. Sure, man. Sure.
This is all a scam to try to get people to vote for him. Especially these latest promises of checks.
Every check that ever showed up went through Congress
Yes, there have been checks sent out to people during Trump’s presidencies. Remember the CARES Act from during COVID? The government sent out 161 million payments that totalled more than $271 billion in 2020. You may recall that he insisted on his name appearing on the checks to people would think that this was directly from him and not an act of Congress. A second round of those checks went out in December 2020.
Anyway, I guess my point here is just, you know, don’t get scammed by Trump the scammer.
The crazy talk issued by Trump, regurgitated by his hangers-on, signal-boosted by maga tee-vee and endlessly parroted on social media by maga influencers isn't crazy because those who say it are themselves crazy, not even the clearly mentally and physically failing Trump.
The crazy talk, growing increasingly untethered from reality in proportion to Trump's election desperation, is a thing because the issuers understand their voter base will believe every word with unquestioning credulity (helped by a maga memory-span now measured in weeks and regardless: anything to the contrary is "fake news") aided in its dissemination among the broader public by a mainstream media which continues to sanewash such unhinged blather as very-serious-news because "both sides" or some such lame excuse.
It captured the news cycle for a day, that's all it was ever intended to do. He says things with a headline in mind, "Americans to get $5000, Trump Says" and the brain-dead media always supplies it.
People often say now that "Trump is disconnected from reality" and they mostly mean he's not aware of the reality happening around him. But he's also disconnected from reality in the sense that he doesn't really care whether the things he says ever become reality. It's all just words, man.