Is that, like, a satire of what Democrats do?
Here's how he put it: "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 or like last year when I gave our great members of the military $1,776."
I remember getting thousands of dollars during the pandemic....
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64 comments:
I'm getting tired of the trolling. More winning, please.
Yuck.
The successful company is the Republicans, so maybe they will be the ones issuing the checks and not the government?
(Also, dividends are issued from profits; governments, most especially our government, have no profits).
I don't see any chance these checks will actually be issued.
Echoes of "Read my lips..."
Is affirmative action also a bribe? Many women and Blacks have used quotas and set-asides to secure lucrative employment and to climb into genuine positions of power they were not qualified for.
The socialists will give me more.
He’s stolen the Democrat playbook and he’s running down the sideline, stepping out of bounds 19 times, until the refs blow the whistle.
The voters expecting a big paycheck will be upset (I hope), and will take it out on JD.
Wealth redistribution. MAGA hates socialism but they LOVE other people's money!
Take my share and pay down the debt. I don't need or want a government handout.
There's always an income cutoff so you never get any cash. On the other hand you don't have the hassle of reporting the income at year end either.
Think about the mind that would think it was good to say this, or think it was a good idea, or legal.
Think about the minds of the people who vote again and again for tax cuts for themselves, are worked up about a $40T debt, and cheered.
Not that anyone took him seriously, obviously.
It is a horrible idea. Printing money is the cause of inflation. Pretty much all of the inflation we are seeing is caused by the Covid dollars pumped into the economy while fewer goods and services were being produced.
I don't see it as satire, just stupid, which is why I also think if pollsters asked if voters support giving all adult citizens $5,000, a majority would probably say yes.
But does anyone consider a federal budget that already spends 33% more than it has in revenues "successful," particularly when we have full employment, no pandemic, or world war.
By the way, that's approximately 1.2 trillion dollars if the money is given to to the 235-240 million adult US citizens. I think Trump has done a lot of good things (securing the border, deporting illegals, bringing manufacturing back to the US, energy independence, etc) but not every idea he comes up with is gold.
Blatant balderdash, disgusting and disgraceful.
No, just No. A dumb idea. On the other hand, my grandkids have Trump accounts, which I think is a terrific idea. And Michael Dell has already kicked in $250, automatically. My hats always off to people that commit to a kid's future. But $5000 handouts is just stupid. Tell us how you're balancing the budget, like WE HAVE TO DO.
Buying votes is abhorrent no matter the party involved.
I was playing around with ChatGPT about this. If Trump had access to 1.2 trillion dollars that weren't printed just for the occasion, and it was applied to the national debt, and no additional debt was added then it would only take about a century to eliminate the $32.1 trillions of debt.
"If we keep your earlier $1.2 trillion initial payoff, leaving about $30.9 trillion, and assume the effective interest rate stays at 3.4%, then the $41 billion of first-year interest savings is applied to principal, which creates still more savings the next year, and so on.
Under that simplified compounding model:
Debt reduction after n years = $1.2T × (1.034)^n
To eliminate the full $32.1 trillion:
1.2 × (1.034)^n = 32.1
That works out to roughly 98 years.
So the rough answer is:
About a century to eliminate the entire $32.1 trillion, if the only ongoing principal payments come from reinvesting the interest savings created by that original $1.2 trillion payoff.
The progression would be approximately:
Time Total debt eliminated
Initially $1.2T
20 years $2.34T
40 years $4.57T
60 years $8.91T
80 years $17.4T
~98 years ~$32.1T
This illustrates why a primary budget surplus matters so much. If the government contributed even another $200–500 billion per year toward principal in addition to the interest savings, the payoff time would fall dramatically."
We are so screwed. On the other hand in 10 years AI will either kill us all or make us richer than dreams of avarice.
Think about the mind that would think it was good to say this, or think it was a good idea, or legal.
It's a New York mind. It's Rodney Dangerfield in the Economics 101 class, teaching the students about bribery in order to get things done.
Democrats have been bribing voters for decades. All of my life and more. Free stuff, free stuff, free stuff, and more free stuff.
Any Democrat who criticizes this ought to explain why Socialism is bad, inflation is bad, debts are bad, all of it. You do not get to pretend to be the fiscally sane party.
He's doing it out in the open, so that makes him immune to a bribery charge. I think.
It might violate 18 USC 597
Wouldn't surprise me if the Democrats tried to prosecute him for this.
"Think about the mind that would think it was good to say this, or think it was a good idea, or legal."
It's every bit as foolish as Biden's student loan forgiveness or Obama's "shovel ready" stimulus.
Ron W. said ..." I think Trump has done a lot of good things (securing the border, deporting illegals, bringing manufacturing back to the US, energy independence, etc) but not every idea he comes up with is gold."
Remember Trump is basically an old-school Democrat who ran as a Republican for President. I agree he has done a lot of good but he has some ideas that I disagree with like low interest rates and wacky refunds like this one.
He has also made the GOP a big tent party.
"By the way, that's approximately 1.2 trillion dollars if the money is given to to the 235-240 million adult US citizens. I think Trump has done a lot of good things (securing the border, deporting illegals, bringing manufacturing back to the US, energy independence, etc) but not every idea he comes up with is gold."
I don't think this is in any way a good idea, but if the money was actually paid directly to US citizens it would be far more productive than the $6 Trillion in government spending that's been pushed out since 2019.
And those who talk about raising taxes to cut the deficit need to point to one time that has actually happened, rather than increased revenues used to justify exponentially increased spending.
Here's the clip.
From a criminal perspective, I think what he's saying is that if the Republicans win the House and the Senate, it will be so good economically that we can afford to give all Americans (including the people who didn't vote Republican) a nice dividend pay out. But if we elect Democrats it will wreck the economy.
An aggressive prosecutor could make a case that this is a criminal act. He's certainly skirting right up to it. But you'd also be literally arguing that every single American who received money (Trump voter or not) is an unindicted co-conspirator.
Trump is a performance artist whose medium is politics. What better response to Democrat's constant wealth redistribution rhetoric than a plain and simple check if GOP wins. Everyone knows it will never happen - that's part of the point.
Anyone here wondering where IEE is? I'm not.
Twitterites have pointed out that the rebates would be equal to 3 years tariffs. IEE has been whining for months about the burden of tariffs on the average citizen. So this is a good thing, right? But IEE is incapable of saying anything positive about Trump, so it must be a bad thing. What can he say? He doesn't know!
That solves the problem of where IEE is: he's waiting for his pre-written talking points, and his paymasters are having trouble coming up with a plausible text for him to cut-and-paste.
Pretend I'm On the Ballot
Hasan Piker in his underwear
What a stupid fuck. He should have promised everybody a hundred grand. Nobody's going to vote for the globalist crypto grifters who are busy getting bitched slapped by the mad mullahs for a measly 5K.
I think Trump has decided that there are a small number of high priority items on his agenda, and he is willing to make deals without regard to philosophy or ideology to achieve those high priority items.
That means that even if you agree with his choice of high priority agenda items, Trump may break your heart and possibly do real damage to the country to get them done.
Personally, I hate the idea of simply giving $5k to everyone, but if it elects representatives who will keep nukes out of Iranian hands, pass the SAVE act, and maintain immigration limits, I can live with that.
I just hope that Trump's successor starts working in earnest on debt and the deficit.
For anyone who seriously thinks we are "getting bitch slapped by the mad mullahs", here's Trent Telenko on Twitter (link):
"Iranian inflation is now at 2% a day? Hyper inflation has officially arrived in Iran.
"The Mullah Regime just lost the ability not only to pay the Basij, IRGC and other regime security forces. It can't pay it's OIL WORKERS!!!
"The Shah's regime fell days after the oil workers went on strike in 1979."
The Tweet he's replying to has the chart and begins "Probably best to just assume Trump is gonna see the Iran thing through now and not wait until post Eday."
270mn adults x $5k = $1.35tn.. I’m going to need double digit yields on the 10yr Scott.. the house seems a little wobbly.
I would immediately use it to buy more gold and gold mining ETFs. The dollars wouldn't be worth the check they're printed on.
Just illustrates what we already have. As HL Mencken [was said to have] said: "Every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods."
It is human nature that Sovereigns abuse sovereign power. I maintain the best guard is to simply limit the sovereign's power. If you do not give them the cash, they cannot misspend the cash.
Trump did go bankrupt multiple times. Now he has run up the debt, is at the helm as the military budget increases to multiple times what any prior country's military has been, and is spiking the cost of living.
I remember when the GOP was considered conservative. Now it is deficit spending, taking a chainsaw to scientific research, and record deficit spending.
No matter how much you guys scream about socialism, your hero is a financial basket case
1.3 trillion dollars you think Congress will approve or using his own money (like the ballroom etc) to go along with your Doge, tariff and other checks from him. Wait you didn't get that yet.. ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE. Followers of a delusional, frantic old man. .good luck
…oh that’s cute the lefties here are sudden advocates of fiscal constraint, just like when Trump flies somewhere or builds things with private funding…
I’m okay the entitlement fraud money back to Americans. First you gotta cut em off…
President Trump gave a one-time, tax-free $1776 payment called the "Warrior Dividend" to approximately 1.45 million active duty and reserve military service members O-6 and below ahead of Christmas 2025. No quid pro quo (quid pro quo means giving something in exchange for something.)
If you want examples of quid pro quo illegalities, check out the Brenda Lee Armstrong case (2026) in Los Angeles's Skid Row where cash was given to homeless in exchange for votes, or the James Brass case (2026) where money was given to homeless for signing petitions using stolen identities of registered voters.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2496/national-debt-growth-by-year
But it's all Donald Trump's fault, right Mark and Dinky?
This is probably the final nail in the coffin on the Mid-term elections. Regardless of the legal realities, it will come off as a crass way to buy votes. Trump has become tone deaf. I know he has to do whatever he can to stop people thinking about his War with Iran, high inflation, high gas prices, high diesel prices, high grocery prices, high beef prices, high health insurance premiums, high property taxes, etc. So he has to distract people with ridiculous claims like this, which he knows will never happen, just like renaming Lake Ontario, New Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, and everything else. He is just whistling by the graveyard.
^^ There’s desperation and then there’s this….
RR,
dividends are usually issued from profits but dont need to be. Plenty of companies have profits but pay no dividend. Amazon and B-H are 2 famous examples.
Other companies have losses but pay dividends even in a bad year because shareholders rely on the income from divodends
Lots of strategies.
I agree with your point, though. If I understand correctly
Govt can't pay out "dividend" in any normal sense of the word
John Henry
Lefties Lonejustice and IEE finally show up. But high inflation, high gas prices, high diesel prices and high grocery prices are from Biden when rates of inflation were also the highest.
And high property taxes? No property taxes in Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Highest property taxes in California, New York and Illinois. And note: The first thing the new mayor of Buffalo New York did was to raise property taxes 20%. That was his first act after election. And he wanted to raise taxes 25% but the totally Democrat Buffalo Common Council dropped the raise to 20%. What do you think Hochul will do immediately after election if she wins?
Vote for Democrats who will then raise your property taxes!
I also think it is a terrible idea.
So terrible that I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until I can understand what he actesaix and means. As opposed to what is reportef
John Henry
Sounds good to me. Worrywarts have been handwringing about “The Debt! The Debt!” since forever. Yawn.
Is it true that "Trump did go bankrupt multiple times"? If you take that in the most obvious meaning, it's a lie: he has never filed for personal bankruptcy. It is true that businesses he owned have gone through Chapter 11 bankruptcy either 4 or 6 times total, depending on how you count complex cases. However, that's out of hundreds of companies, and, more important, Chapter 11 is so-called reorganization bankruptcy, where a company gets time to reorganize its debts but still has to pay them. Mark is hoping we'll think these were Chapter 7 bankruptcies, where the company is shut down, its assets divided up, and the creditors get whatever percentage they can of what they're owed from the remaining assets.
As for whether we have "record deficit spending", someone on Twitter today was saying that this year's deficit spending is actually a smaller percentage than last year's and the year before's. Is that true? Mark doesn't know, and doesn't care. Just as he doesn't care that the increased military spending is urgently needed to head off World War III, deterring Russia from invading the Baltics or Finland and China from invading Taiwan.
I’m thinking Pres.Trump will ask for proof of citizenship and the Dem controlled states will refuse. So the total.numbers will be much smaller.
@lonejustice: High property taxes? I guess you forgot Dem by by Mamdani’s pied a terre taxes.in NYC.
A ‘dividend’ of $5000 per person if the Republicans win the midterms. It sounds similar to his $5000 distribution promised from tariff collections and the $2000 per taxpayer from DOGE savings. Remind me how those promises worked out?
Maybe IEE should have read my 11:46am comment, in which I pointed out that $5,000 is three years worth of tariff receipts, so it is the "$5000 distribution promised from tariff collections" he's whining about now.
That’s true, I also got thousands of dollars, I used them to pay my club dues.
I am sure that this won’t be inflationary and the money won’t just be reconfiscated through higher prices.
Bessent buys back $6 billion and Trump spends another $1.3 trillion Circular firing squad.
I actually support carefully thought out tariffs designed to bring back industry to the US. What Trump has done is just utterly capricious and reckless.
Remember the peace dividend? I lived then in the weapons belt north of Boston, did not know that my prosperity depended on building machines to kill Rooskies, but it did. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
I love Trump -- before my car could only hold $50 of gas he made it hold $70!
GasBuddy statement on Diesel Reaching $6 Per Gallon for the First Time in History: https://x.com/GasBuddyGuy/status/2098144431777976373?s=20
Are Gasbuddy's prices adjusted for inflation? If not, they're deeply dishonest, as is anyone who quotes them without that proviso. Others on Twitter have noted that real (not nominal) diesel prices have been higher in the past.
And that's leaving out the question of how much of the high average price of diesel is due to state taxes. Have any states raised their diesel taxes lately?
*Think about the minds of the people who vote again and again for tax cuts for themselves*
You mean voting to keep more of MY money?
The horror!!!
*This is probably the final nail in the coffin on the Mid-term elections.*
Is that what The Des Moines Register's polling is telling you?
'...No property taxes in Florida, Texas and Tennessee....'
I hate to break the news, but we have plenty of property taxes in Texas. Good breaks for agricultural exemptions, substantial ones for declared homesteads, some considerations by county for seniors. But we sure got'em. We don't have an income tax, that's the good news. But our property taxes are bad enough to where politicians campaign on them.
𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘎𝘢𝘴𝘣𝘶𝘥𝘥𝘺'𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘥𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯?
Do American consumers pay an “inflation-adjusted” price at the pump, or the price on the sign? Does a trucking company calculate its fuel bill in 2026 dollars or imaginary 2008 dollars?
Yes, historical comparisons should be inflation-adjusted. But that doesn’t make today’s $6 diesel less expensive to a trucker or less inflationary. State taxes are worth examining too, but they average only about 36¢/gal on diesel. The current surge is overwhelmingly a fuel-market problem, not a tax story.
And since inflation was mentioned: diesel powers freight, agriculture and construction. Higher diesel costs get embedded in the cost of moving food, packages, raw materials and virtually everything else. Wholesale prices were already up 5.4% year-over-year in August, with diesel among the major contributors.
So yes, by all means adjust the historical chart for inflation. Just don’t adjust the actual bill.
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