The nonpartisan nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released cost projections after Trump pitched his idea this weekend.
Donald Trump’s proposal to send Americans $2,000 rebate checks from money collected through his tariffs is projected to cost $600 billion a year ‒ about double what the United States is expected to generate from the new duties on imports.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan nonprofit that studies fiscal policy, released the projections on Nov. 10 after Trump over the weekend pitched his idea on Truth Social. The president touted “taking in Trillions of Dollars” and said, “A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
I mean, sure, but what’s the advantage in giving any of it back? You’d think he’d just steal it. He’s not exactly shy about committing crimes, and the justice system is out to lunch in perpetuity when it involves him.
I mean it’s pretty classic narcissist shit. The husband who punches his wife in the face and sends roses the next day. The deadbeat dad who drops off an expensive birthday gift 3 weeks late after blowing off said birthday. They don’t like when people are angry but lack the empathy and emotional maturity to do any actual introspection or attempts at a proper resolution, so they just throw money or something shiny at the problem and pat themselves on the back for their ‘compassion’.
His handlers are starting to worry that the number of maga morons who voted for him have dropped so low that even the steps they’ve taken to disenfranchise their opponents won’t be enough to prevent progressives from swooping in in 2026 replacing Republicans and Democrats.
They are banking on people being too dumb to realize that they’re going to have to borrow more than half that money to pay it out.
They are, sadly, correct.
Not sure if this is his exact motive or not, but its pretty obvious that this would buy back some good will he’s lost with some of his followers or people who don’t pay attention to politics. People get angry, then get a check and then calm down a bit. For where I live, a $2000 check would maybe cover most of rent for a low-mid range 1 bedroom apartment for a month, but that’s it.
For other people in the country, presumably where more of his followers live, that could be like 3 months of rent. Its also not his personal money he’d be losing, its ours. He’s just forcing the public to spend their own tax money on a Band-Aid for his terrible economic policies, while it hilariously gets taxed again in the form of ‘income’ for each individual.
That’s a reasonable argument I largely hadn’t considered because I genuinely hadn’t considered he cares whether he has goodwill, or would even accept he had lost it anyway. But if he does, and he has, you could well be right.
I think this is just another 5000 check from doge though.
He is a malignant narcissist. He wants people to admire him, but doesn’t actually see them as people with rights or have the slightest actual sympathy or empathy. Thus he’s incapable of acting altruistically because everything he does is to elevate himself, and altruism requires an act of selflessness.
This is no different, because it’s meant to get people taking about how generous he is. He’s using public money to buy one-directional love.
Who knows. He claimed he paused tarrifs in the beginning because people were getting ‘yippy’ (lmao what kind of dismissive, out of touch fucking asshole says that?), so he could just be tired of hearing about poor people’s troubles and thinks this will shut everyone up.