Trump Tells Fans to Donate to Him or Else Dems Will Steal Their Money

Americans across the country are facing enormous scam risks because of their president.

In a fundraising email circulated Monday, Donald Trump told his supporters that Democrats would steal their “tariff rebate checks” if they didn’t donate money to him within the hour.

“Troubles are BOILING OVER,” the email reads. “Dems want to send your check to illegals if you don’t respond in the next hour!”

Earlier this month, Trump floated the idea that the federal government would subsidize checks to American citizens to offset the cost of his “Liberation Day” tariff plan, seemingly similar to how he distributed funds during the Covid-19 pandemic. But within hours, scammers were already attempting to cash in on the national confusion. One scam flagged by the Better Business Bureau promised call recipients with unclaimed tariff rebate checks worth upwards of $5,000.

But Trump’s team has not taken heed of just how similar their fundraising language is to that of scam callers, seemingly more than happy to jump in on the hysteria.

“Only a massive and immediate response will do,” the president’s fundraising email continued. “I need YOU to help me hit my end-of-year fundraising goal by midnight tomorrow or EVERYTHING we’ve worked so hard to accomplish could go BYE BYE.”

A similar fundraising email issued by Trump’s team earlier this month urged recipients to “confirm” their names in order to receive the government checks. At the bottom, the message claimed to be “the only tariff rebate email authorized by President Trump.” That ad was paid for by “Never Surrender, Inc.,” a recently rebranded super PAC that mechanized Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and noted that it was not official communication with the U.S. government.

Regardless of the fact that Trump’s email has more in common with well-worn messages from a Nigerian prince than official White House communication, the entire concept of a tariff rebate program is nonsensical. Economists have repeatedly pointed out that tariffs are effectively taxes paid by importers and offset to consumers, rather than a legitimate revenue stream that pools money for future use.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Trump from claiming that his administration has made “millions”—or maybe “billions”—off of the unstable trade plan.

The National Guard presence in Washington hasn’t put a dent in violent crime in the nation’s capital.

At least, that’s the reality for the families of local murder victims, who claim that the Trump administration is ignoring their plight in order to push a narrative that crime has been practically eradicated from Washington, D.C.

There were at least 128 murders in the nation’s capital over the course of 2025, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

One of those murders involved 17-year-old Tristan Johnson, who was shot and killed in November over what his family believed was the attempted theft of his favorite jacket. Just two weeks later, Donald Trump completely bypassed Johnson’s death to tell the nation that the city hadn’t “had a murder in six months.”

The boy’s mother, Juanita Sampler, told The New York Times that bold-faced lies about crime in the city were “heartbreaking.”

“For the president to say there’s no murders? That’s heartbreaking, that’s devastating to me,” she told the newspaper. “That’s my son. He is someone. He is somebody. His name was Tristan Johnson.”

Washington was a critical component of Trump’s agenda when he returned to office in January. Alongside other Democrat-led cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle, Trump used Washington to push a baseless claim that America’s cities have been consumed by violence—violence that could only be settled by the federalization of the target areas’ law enforcement.

That resulted in the deployment of thousands of National Guard members to different cities across the country, whom the administration used to assist ICE agents and safeguard its immigration agenda. So far, that has involved tearing parents from their children and deporting people, without trial, to a Salvadoran prison well known for its systemic torture practices and inmate deaths.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Associated Press in November that Trump’s strategy had transformed Washington “from a crime-ridden mess into a beautiful, clean, safe city.” In a statement to the Times for Monday’s story, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said that the president had “done more than any elected official in recent history to address violent crime in cities around the country.”

Homicides rates in Washington have gone down, but it doesn’t seem that the National Guard has had anything to do with it. Washington now experiences roughly seven killings per month, as opposed to 2024 when it had 12 murders per month on average. But those rates were already on the decline before Trump ordered troops to occupy the capital in September.

The material truth of Washington’s crime figures have not been flattering for Trump’s attempted rebrand. Instead, he’s claimed that crime has fallen to “virtually nothing” and that the city has “no crime”—unfounded assertions that have left real victims feeling utterly forgotten.

“I want the world to know about my son,” Carlena Durbin, the mother of shooting victim Jermaine Durbin, told the Times. “He had a family. He was loved. I want his story out so at least Trump can see that too.”

Carlitos Ricardo Parias—the TikTok streamer and immigration journalist who was shot by ICE in south Los Angeles this October—has had his indictment dropped by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olgin on Saturday dismissed the indictment on the grounds that Parias was not given access to counsel while in ICE detention, and the government did not abide by the court deadline to release the body cam footage from the shooting.

ICE initially claimed that Parias, who goes by Richard LA online, was pulled over using standard operating procedures. According to the affidavit, Parias ignored commands to exit his vehicle, hitting two law enforcement vehicles before “accelerating aggressively” with his car. But U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli directly contradicted the government’s argument by revealing the agents “boxed him in,” which is not considered standard procedure for a traffic stop.

CNN reported that an ICE officer confronted Parias and used his weapon to smash Parias’s window, according to a law enforcement source who spoke to the outlet. Authorities believe the agent’s weapon fired while he was attempting to grab Parias, striking Parias and ricocheting to hit a deputy marshal. Parias was then charged with assault.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent her entire career profusely defending President Trump and his MAGA agenda. But their last conversation reportedly left her stunned, as he said he attacked both her and the survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Greene fought for the release of the Epstein files for months, eventually teaming up with Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who were able to successfully force the administration to begin to release some heavily redacted files with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

When Greene implored Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office in a show of support in September, she told the New York Times Magazine, he berated her, telling her that they didn’t deserve the honor. That was the last in-person conversation they had.

“How did all of this end up to a point where it was about releasing files about women who were raped, and not the serious things that I think truly matter about helping to get our economy stabilized again?” she said. “Help reduce the cost of living, fix the housing market, fix health insurance—for the love of God, what the [expletive] is the matter with these people?”

Her last text exchange with Trump occurred two months later, in which she told the president about the fears she held for the safety of her family, given a death threat against her son she’d received that morning, following Trump publicly rebuking her as a traitor. He responded with a long message that completely ignored her fears and attacked her personally once again.

The administration responded with complete disdain.

“President Trump remains the undisputed leader of the greatest and fastest growing political movement in American history—the MAGA movement,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Times. “On the other hand, Congresswoman Greene is quitting on her constituents in the middle of her term and abandoning the consequential fight we’re in—we don’t have time for her petty bitterness.”

The race to replace Donald Trump is on, but no one seems particularly keen on his successor.

Despite his supporters openly encouraging him to ignore the Constitution, Trump has reportedly told his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles “a couple of times” that he knows a third term isn’t possible. And that leaves many in MAGA looking for what comes next.

Turning Point USA, the organization that energized young voters to turn out for Trump, has recently reoriented its focus on Vice President JD Vance ahead of the 2028 election. Vance, according to the Charlie Kirk-founded conservative nonprofit, has the chops to take Trump’s spot on the next Republican presidential ticket. There’s just one glaring flaw: No one seems to like him.

A CNN poll conducted earlier this month found that just 22 percent of Republicans support Vance’s bid for the presidency. They cited his “intelligence” as a key factor in his potential success with American voters, as well as the likelihood that he would continue Trump’s agenda.

The president’s suggestions as to who could top the Republican presidential ticket in 2028 have been so quiet that they’re practically murmurs. Without ever explicitly signaling his support for Vance to lead the party, Trump has lauded his number two, publicly describing Vance as “very capable” and the “most likely” choice to front the Republican ticket.

Vance has not yet announced a formal bid for the Oval Office, but that hasn’t stopped major Republicans from chiming in with their support. State Secretary Marco Rubio told Vanity Fair that he would back Vance rather than challenge him for the next GOP presidential nomination, while Representative Anna Paulina Luna has also shown her support for the 41-year-old Ohioan.

Turning Point’s new leader and Kirk’s partying, gold suit–wearing widow Erika Kirk made waves with her own support for the vice president after she intimately embraced him on stage in October, weeks after her husband’s assassination.

Erika Kirk and Turning Point formally endorsed Vance for president at the group’s conference earlier this month, pledging to help get him elected.

Somehow, Vance is the best that the party’s got—as of right now. No other GOP figure, including longtime presidential wannabes State Secretary Marco Rubio and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, eclipsed five percent in the CNN poll.

The largest group of respondents—some 64 percent of those polled—said they had “no one specific in mind” to top the 2028 ticket, suggesting an open playing field in which just about anyone could step in to win the Republican nomination.

Still, several of Trump’s most ardent supporters—including his first term chief strategist Steve Bannon—have advocated that the president should attempt to seek a third term. Vance, Bannon claimed in August, is simply “not tough enough” for the job.