I admit my naïveté.
When I first heard President Trump say, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000” if Republicans retain their Congressional majorities in the Nov. 3 midterm election, I thought he, personally, and maybe some of his friends, would cash in their Bitcoin to fund the payout.
But of course, he was using the universal “I,” such as in everyone but me will write the check.
So we, the taxpayers, will be expected to fund the estimated $1.2 trillion “Trump Dividends,” which the president explains as a reward for following his advice.
The president also likes to use the universal “we,” as in during his 2024 campaign when he said, “We’re going to grow like nobody’s ever grown before.”
He’s right on the money. For himself.
Since his second term began in 2025, the president has raked in an estimated $2 billion through his various ventures, according to the Office of Government Ethics.
His most lucrative spin-off is the TRUMP meme coin, which generated $1.4 billion in its early days but has since languished for investors; real estate holdings have netted him $620 million; lawsuits against the media, $86.5 million, and his personalized Bibles, $3 million.
Meanwhile, the country’s debt is now $40 trillion, the highest ever.
Not helping are the president’s sweeping tariffs, his war on Iran, and tax cuts for the wealthy. They are only making things more expensive, depleting military stockpiles, costing American lives, and emptying the country’s coffers.
Putting us even further behind? Half of the tab is in ever-increasing interest payments to investors who have purchased U.S. debt.
President Trump isn’t even bothering to disguise the “Trump dividends” as economic stimulus, like the benefits distributed during the COVID-19 pandemic when so many lost their jobs.
Heck, these payouts would total more than the three rounds of pandemic stimulus checks combined.
It’s not that most of us wouldn’t like an extra five grand, but we’re not some third-world country run by organized crime. Surely, our president is above paying — I mean, having us pay — for people to vote Republican.
And though it does align with his transactional nature, he won’t be able to follow through. Just like when Elon Musk took a chainsaw to U.S. programs and departments. Trump said the cuts would save the country “so many millions, billions, hundreds of billions” and promised to direct $5,000 windfalls to the roughly 79 million households that pay federal income tax.
Those checks never materialized. Nor should they have, if the purpose of the short-lived DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, was to reduce government spending.
