Even MAGA World Isn’t Buying Trump’s Free Money Promise

Even conservatives are skeptical about President Trump’s massive Hail Mary to give everyone $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms.

“Only I can make this promise to you.... If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them … I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” Trump said Wednesday night at the GOP midterm convention. “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, remember?”   

But not even Fox News was buying it. 

“We should note though, it is not the first time he has promised a cash payment like this,” the network clarified shortly after Trump’s speech. “He promised Americans $2,000 rebates during his tariff policy when that was enacted, but after court challenges to the tariffs themselves, those $2,000 checks so far have not materialized.” 

Fox hosts laid these concerns at the feet of Vice President JD Vance. 

“You do the quick math, that’s about $1.3 trillion,” Brett Baier told Vance. “I can hear the critics’ heads exploding. They’re saying out loud, I guarantee you: ‘The president is bribing voters to vote for Republicans to take over the House. And then he’s bankrupting the country because the deficit debt is huge, and inflation would come back if this comes into play. So how do you answer those criticisms?”

“What the president’s talking about is fundamentally a dividend for American workers. We’re taking in an extraordinary amount of revenue because the president of the United States is actually standing up to both foreign companies, but also foreign countries who’ve been taking advantage of America’s workers for pretty much my entire life,” Vance said, referring to tariffs.

In reality, the revenue brought in by Trump’s tariffs, under $500 billion, would not cover a $5,000 check for every American, which would cost $1.2 trillion. 

It’s obvious at this point that Trump’s first inclination when his back is against the wall is to dangle money in front of the masses. He’s promised cash payments multiple times, including $2,000 stimulus checks for the “tariff dividend,” a $5,000 stimulus check for the bygone “DOGE dividend,” and $1,000 checks for the Affordable Care Act. None of those ever materialized. 

Republicans, by the way, already control Congress. If Trump wanted to make this a reality, he could have by now.

President Trump is attempting to censor late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel. 

At the start of his show Wednesday night, Kimmel revealed in his monologue that his interview with Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico won’t air Thursday after the Federal Communications Commission threatened him, the show, ABC, the network’s affiliates, and local ABC stations based on “simple traditional editorial decisions.” 

“And so out of consideration for our local stations, especially our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates who would have to deal with this nonsense, my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television. It will be posted on YouTube instead. It will not be on TV,” Kimmel said. “So if you want to learn about a candidate for the Senate tomorrow, you will have to go to the Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube channel where you will see it in its entirety.

“And thank goodness we have that, because in the America that we live in right now, that is the best we can do. Until November, of course. Make sure you’re registered to vote, by the way. Because that’s the most important thing you can do,” Kimmel added as his audience applauded.  

It’s an eerily similar situation to what former late-night host Stephen Colbert faced earlier this year, when he also attempted to interview Talarico on his show before the primary election. Just like Kimmel and ABC, Colbert and CBS at the time were threatened by the FCC and its chair, Project 2025 co-author Brendan Carr, and the Talarico interview was posted online instead. The public fight gave the interview extra publicity and it made it Colbert’s highest viewed interview ever. 

ABC is currently suing the Trump administration over attempts to censor Kimmel last year for a joke he made about Trump and first lady Melania Trump. It seems that in his second term as president, Trump is trying to silence dissent without any regard for the Constitution. 

President Trump has made millions on his oil and gas investments thanks to the Iran war. 

CNBC reports that the president’s investment holdings continued to trade energy stocks during the first six months of the war. Between February 27 and August 31, his nine largest fuel assets grew between $1.5 million and $4.4 million, the network estimates, referring to his annual financial disclosure. 

Trump reported owning stock in Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Kinder Morgan, Marathon Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum, Phillips 66, Valero Energy, and the Williams Companies. CNBC calculated Trump’s gains based on what he said in his June disclosure about his assets, looking at how each stock performed over the six-month period. 

The last time Trump disclosed any stock trades was June 29, so the data is incomplete. It’s also hard to get a completely accurate estimate as Trump’s disclosure doesn’t reveal exact share counts.

CNBC stated that it didn’t find any evidence that Trump or his financial advisers used advance knowledge in their decisions, that his finances influenced policy decisions, or that he personally directed specific transactions. A White House spokesperson also issued a flat-out denial. 

“Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold,” Davis Ingle told CNBC. “All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest.”

Still, many of the trades occurred at big moments in the war, such as the first trading day after the February 27 attack or just hours before Trump announced a (now-collapsed) two-week ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday declared that the Iran war won’t end until after the midterm elections, adding that he is no longer pursuing negotiations with the country.

It’s bad enough that Trump’s statements and Truth Social posts can manipulate the markets, but the fact that they can also affect his own wealth is a glaring red flag. Trump frequently disparages certain companies and praises others, even mentioning stock symbols at times. He also owns stakes in several defense companies that have done well thanks to the Iran war.  

Even if he isn’t directly involved, Trump knows what is good for his money and what isn’t. The idea that he makes decisions without any regard to how it affects his portfolio, or the assets of his friends and allies, is absurd. He’s already made billions of dollars since being elected president for the second time, and he’s not about to deliberately wreck his net worth. 

America has a runaway president, and no one on his team is willing to rein him in.

White House officials and elected Republicans have abandoned their attempts to sway Donald Trump’s opinion, finding it futile to push back on the president’s demands, Axios reported Wednesday.

Despite a growing distrust of the president’s instincts, Trump’s inner circle has found it increasingly difficult to change his mind once it’s made up, according to numerous aides, advisers, and donors that spoke with Axios.

“Why bother?” one longtime adviser told the outlet. “He’s the boss.”

The Republican Party has repeatedly caved to Trump’s whims since 2016, allowing him to meander through his second term without the threat of consequence or even a second opinion. As a result, Trump thrust America into war with Iran without any clear goals, aggravated some of America’s longest allies—notably Canada—by shitposting online, incensed the public by tearing down the White House in order to build a $600 million, gold-laden ballroom, and effectively made an already contentious midterm cycle a referendum on his popularity.

“He’s an 80-year-old man who did it his way,” a donor who recently met with the president told Axios. “What he wants, he gets.”

Part of the determination to stay in the president’s good graces stems from Trump’s enormous political clout—a reality that many in his orbit claim is unlikely to expire anytime soon.

“Discount Trump at your peril,” a top adviser told Axios. “He wields enormous power in the party, in politics and culturally.”

“Anyone who thinks he’s going to retreat into the shadows is either stupid or has bad political instincts,” they added.

Insiders are apparently planning to live and die by Trump, even if that means allowing him to run roughshod over the country’s better interests.

“He’s going to remain the dominant political figure even after his term ends,” the adviser told Axios. “And everybody knows it.”

President Trump is trying once again to skirt the Constitution and mess with the U.S. census.

The White House is proposing changes to the 2030 census that would exclude every non–U.S. citizen without permanent residency, flouting the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, which states that the census must count the “whole number of persons in each state.” The proposal, released online Wednesday, also seeks to stop asking about race and ethnicity, which has been included in every census since 1790, and ban any future questions on sexual orientation.

If Trump’s current effort survives court challenges, it will affect congressional redistricting, which is already being manipulated by Republican-led states thanks to the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act earlier this year. It could also affect antidiscrimination efforts and laws by preventing the collection of relevant statistics.

During Trump’s previous term as president, his administration attempted to include a question about citizenship status, only to abandon the effort after being blocked by the Supreme Court. Trump also attempted to exclude all undocumented immigrants from the count with a July 2020 executive order. A federal court in California ruled against the order, and the census results weren’t completed before Trump left office, after which President Biden repealed those changes.

But Trump clearly didn’t give up on the plan. The administration is supposed to send a report to Congress, which has final approval over the census per the Constitution, by April 1, on its proposed questions for the survey. Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have proposed similar changes to the census themselves to support their gerrymandering efforts.

All of this could hurt participation in the census even if Trump’s changes don’t go through, as respondents would be suspicious of what the federal government plans to do with the data. That could lead to inaccurate results and hurt communities across the country. These days, the White House is trying to use every tool at its disposal to manipulate elections or serve its mass deportation agenda, regardless of what the Constitution or federal law says.