“I did do that?” asked the 79-year-old President of the United States when reporters confronted him about the $2,000 checks he promised every American would receive from tariff revenue. “When did I do that?”
He did it at 1:59 p.m. Eastern Time on November 9, 2025. On Truth Social. In writing.
THE DETAILS: In newly released audio from a New York Times interview last week, Trump appeared genuinely confused when asked about his own flagship promise.
Back in November, he posted that his tariff policies had seen the U.S. “taking in Trillions of Dollars” and that “a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
Except none of that is true. Tariff revenue for 2025 stood at $195 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That’s a 150 percent increase over the previous year—but it’s also at minimum 90.25 percent less than the “Trillions” Trump claimed. Math is hard, apparently.
BUT BUT BUT: The administration did send out checks before Christmas—to military personnel. A symbolic $1,776 payment (get it? The year of independence?) was framed as a “warrior dividend” from tariff revenue. Except it wasn’t from tariffs at all.
According to Defense One, the money actually came from Congressionally allocated reconciliation funds intended to subsidize housing allowances for service members. The administration just slapped a patriotic label on existing money.
OF COURSE: When pressed again about when non-military Americans might see their checks, Trump recovered with a classic move: kicking the can down the road. “Well, I am going to,” he said. “The tariff money is so substantial that’s coming in, that I’ll be able to do $2,000 sometime, I would say toward the end of the year.”
So the promise he forgot making has now been pushed to “toward the end of 2026.” Convenient.
WHY IT MATTERS: Here’s the thing about tariffs that Trump either doesn’t understand or hopes you won’t figure out: the financial burden of tariffs historically shifts onto consumers and domestic producers, not foreign exporters. Economists have been screaming this for years. Americans are paying more for goods while the president promises them checks from imaginary “Trillions” that don’t exist.
The man who built his political brand on being a dealmaker can’t remember deals he publicly announced two months ago. And the checks he’s promising? They’re based on revenue figures he’s inflating by roughly 1,000 percent. The only people who got any money were troops—and that wasn’t even tariff money to begin with.
At 79, the president’s memory of his own promises seems about as reliable as his understanding of basic economics.