Trump’s Supposed Plan for $5,000 Checks Gets Even More Unbelievable

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thinks Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe can be paid for with funds from the so-called “Trump Platinum Card,” which hasn’t even been launched yet.

Lutnick shared this ridiculous idea with NBC News on Thursday.

“Together we’re going to deliver that plan and we’re going to pay that money to the Americans, and not from taxpayer money.... We have a waitlist of more than 100,000 people who want to come,” he said, referring to the Platinum Card applicants. “That’s $500 billion.”

The Platinum Card is a $15,000 application and $5 million donation to the government for extremely wealthy immigrants looking to expedite their citizenship process. The program would allow applicants to live in the U.S. for nearly the entire year without paying taxes on foreign income.

At the Republican midterm convention on Wednesday, Trump vowed to “issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000” if the Republicans win the House and Senate in November. Since then, the administration has scrambled to propose different ways to pay for the promise, which would cost an estimated $1.3 trillion.

Vice President JD Vance thinks they’ll be able to use tariff revenue to deliver their promise. (Tariff revenue would cover only a fraction of that sum.) National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett thinks that Congress will be able to foot the bill. Either way, Lutnick and every other administration official involved has tried to explain their way out of it, or frame the promise as some galaxy-brained moment from a genius president. In reality, they are obviously covering for a desperate president willing to say and do anything to win in November.

Sorry to break it to you, but New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weren’t actually cracking up at the 9/11 memorial ceremony.

Conservatives were outraged Friday after a video circulated on social media showing Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez laughing and smiling at the ceremony in New York City.

Michael Ragusa, an aide for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also attended the event claimed the reports about Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez were “not true.”

“I was standing next to them the whole time. The camera just caught her greeting him hello,” Ragusa wrote on X. “Multiple other politicians were laughing and joking behind me. Republicans and Democrats.”

“And for the record I am a life long republican who has been very critical of these two,” Ragusa wrote in another post. “I’m just sick of this fake news and people just saying whatever they want.”

It appears that the short video clip was taken out of context. In fact, Mamdani was reportedly the only senior elected official to stay until after all the names were read.

Still, Republicans are keeping a tight grip on their pearls.

“Mamdani and AOC seem to be having the time of their lives while everyone else is paying respects to the deceased,” wrote Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on X.

“How the hell do you laugh while the names of those murdered on 9/11 are being read aloud? Why would you do so?” wrote Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who infamously ‘liked’ a pornographic tweet on 9/11 several years ago.

I don’t recall the same level of outrage when Trump was spotted laughing with former President Barack Obama at late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral.

Surely, Republicans were just as upset after seeing the flood of images showing President Donald Trump dozing off onstage during the memorial ceremony at the Pentagon Friday. Oh wait, Republicans didn’t care at all? For God’s sake, even former President Joe Biden looked more awake than he did!

Security at the Republican National Convention kicked a trio of Epstein survivors out of the event after a journalist they were accompanying dared to ask a House candidate about the Epstein files.

Independent journalist Tara Palmeri went through the proper channels to attend the event, acquiring a press pass and event credentials to enter the unprecedented “Trump-a-palooza.” Palmeri’s four guests—her producer and the three survivors, who were already in town to attend the Epstein Files Reading Room—did the same.

But the full authorization wasn’t enough to protect them from being spontaneously escorted out of the Dallas arena. Palmeri also documented what happened to them on her Substack.

The group hit a snag just three minutes after they walked into the event space. That’s when Palmeri questioned Robert Burke, a Republican running to represent the greater Boston suburbs, about his position on Epstein’s crimes and the government’s protracted rollout of the files.

“That’s a great topic,” Burke said, as soon as Palmeri informed him she was surrounded by several Epstein survivors. “Because we really need to know what actually happened.”

Burke then prompted the survivors to throw him some questions. One approached the microphone and asked if he would support holding anybody that participated in Epstein’s crimes accountable, regardless of their party affiliation.

“I don’t care who they are, unlawful touching is unlawful touching. Consent is consent,” Burke said. He then added, unprompted, that one of his friends represented Epstein as well as Ghislaine Maxwell, though he declined to offer up the name of the individual.

Palmeri then redirected the conversation back toward the unreleased files, asking why Donald Trump “didn’t want to release the Epstein files.” The Justice Department has released roughly three million pages from the collection, but officials have also admitted that the sprawling investigation collected more than six million pages, suggesting that a mere 50 percent of the documents have been released since Congress ordered the administration to do so last year.

But Burke only wanted to speak about Joe Biden.

“But here’s the thing—the buck stops where?” asked Palmeri in response.

“The Department of Justice,” said Burke.

“And who controls the Department of Justice?” she pressed.

“Trump does,” said Burke, though he noted that he disagreed with the “premise” of Palmeri’s argument.

Burke then said that those who participated in Epstein’s crimes should be held accountable, “no matter who they are.”

“What if it’s President Trump?” asked Palmeri. “He was friends with [Epstein] for years, he’s mentioned thousands of times in the files. What if it’s him?”

“What happened with him? Didn’t they drag him to court about that?” asked Burke, before reversing course and claiming that it was an “unfair question.”

Burke then said he would support a second iteration of the Epstein Files Transparency Act—which was introduced to the House earlier this week—and would call for more hearings related to the prolific human trafficker’s crimes and associates.

The interview lasted approximately eight minutes. Almost immediately afterward, security approached the group, accusing them of carrying signs and protesting the event.

Palmeri said she explained that she was a credentialed member of the press, and that she had been admitted as such.

“We’re allowed to talk to guests, we’re allowed to talk to people. That’s why we’re here, we’re media,” Palmeri told the guard.

By 2:40 p.m., Palmeri said their entire group was thrown out of the building—just 35 minutes after they had arrived.

The contractor President Trump hired to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is taking full responsibility for the pool’s torn blue paint and lining.

The New York Times reports that Atlantic Industrial Coatings told the White House that its own failures were responsible for the botched renovation, not vandals, contradicting the Trump administration’s claim that the pool had been sabotaged.

The Times cited government documents from the past two months showing that AIC found issues in planning and executing the renovation. In reports dated August 14 and September 2, the company blamed its own work, saying that workers did not spray enough primer to keep the pool liner’s layers stuck together.

The company also said that its repair plan for the liner layers called for the use of two chemicals that weren’t compatible with each other. The chemical on top reached a high temperature that the one below couldn’t handle, leading to the bottom layer of the liner blistering and coming loose.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals using sharp tools like knives and box cutters slashed at the pool’s new “American flag blue” paint, causing it to peel. His U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, even charged several people over that false claim, including former Olympian David Hearn. Eventually, all of the charges were dropped.

All of this shows that the Trump administration rushed through a botched renovation. Officials bypassed the bidding process to hand the contract to AIC, which used a process partially designed by David Schutzenhofer, the general manager of Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. When that effort failed spectacularly, Trump blamed random people for the pool he ruined rather than take responsibility.

Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, NPR spoke with a support group for undocumented workers who served on cleanup crews following the attacks—individuals who are now being tirelessly persecuted by the Trump administration.

Rosa Bramble Caballero, a social worker who runs the cleanup crew support group, described how multiple contractors were paid millions of dollars to manage the cleanup response. Those companies hired subcontractors, and those companies in turn hired day laborers standing on street corners.

“Many women who did housekeeping were taken there. And then they got there and realized they were actually at Ground Zero, which, by the way, sometimes they were not told that that’s where they were going,” she said. It isn’t clear just how many undocumented workers were involved in these efforts, but estimates are between 2,000 and 6,000 people.

Undocumented workers are entitled to workers’ compensation, and individuals have received around $80,000 each for their work on 9/11 cleanup crews in the past. But in light of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants, Bramble Caballero said many are now too scared to apply. For others, the money only went so far. “Because they are undocumented and their health has been compromised, they really can no longer work. So although they may have received awards, those awards dry out,” she told NPR.

One support group member who spoke to NPR, Lucelly from Colombia, didn’t know where she was going when she got picked up off the street for a cleaning job on the morning of September 12. Lucelly approached Ground Zero armed only with a paper mask and rubber gloves. Years later, Lucelly was diagnosed with breast cancer and respiratory disease after coming into contact with toxic debris and air—although the city was well aware it was unsafe.

Another woman, Rosa from Guatemala, worked in demolition and was shocked to see the scant safety measures immigrants workers were using at the site. “It was mostly Ecuadorians, Colombians, Peruvians, Mexicans. There were so many people doing the same work as me … but wearing little paper masks.”

Among responders and survivors, there have been more than 57,000 cases of cancer and more than 10,000 cases of chronic respiratory disorder linked to the site. Now they also have Donald Trump’s extrajudicial militias to worry about.

“I am scared. We are all scared. My daughter lives in New Jersey, and I don’t even go visit her, because I am scared of immigration. It is a new pain on top of an old one,” Lucelly told NPR.

“We gave it all. When we got to Ground Zero we felt so much fear. Oh the fear we felt! No one ever asked to check out immigration status. Oh no, they treated us like we were real important back then. It was: ‘Go in Lucelly. Go Lucelly. Get in there.’”