The $2,000 Check That’ll Never Clear: Trump’s Latest Promise and the Suckers Who Believe It
On November 9, 2025, Donald Trump took to Truth Social with another bold promise: “at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.” The funds would come from tariff revenues, he claimed, as part of his vision of America as “the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World.”
If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s the same song, different verse—a pattern Trump’s perfected over nearly a decade of making grand financial promises to Americans that either never materialize or arrive in drastically diminished form.
December 2020: The $2,000 That Became $600
Let’s rewind to December 2020. Trump publicly demanded $2,000 stimulus checks, calling the proposed $600 payments “a disgrace.” He threatened to veto the entire relief package unless Congress boosted the amount.
What happened? Trump signed the bill with $600 checks after holding it up for days. The House, led by Democrats, actually passed a bill for the $2,000 payments Trump demanded. But it died in the Republican-controlled Senate, blocked by Trump’s own party. Americans got $600. The remaining $1,400 didn’t arrive until Biden took office.
Trump’s Treasury Secretary at the time? He insisted Republicans “would never go above $600,” according to Nancy Pelosi’s account. Trump’s demand was theater—a last-minute stunt after his aides had already negotiated the lower amount.
2025: Three Promises, Zero Checks
Fast-forward to Trump’s second term. He’s floated stimulus check ideas at least three times this year:
February 2025: Trump and Elon Musk suggested $5,000 “DOGE dividend” checks funded by government efficiency savings. The Department of Government Efficiency was supposed to cut $2 trillion in waste. Actual savings? Around $214 billion—and the deficit actually increased. No checks materialized.
July 2025: Senator Josh Hawley introduced the American Worker Rebate Act, backed by Trump, proposing $600 minimum payments per person from tariff revenues. The bill stalled in committee. No votes. No funding. No checks.
October 2025: Trump told One America News he was “considering” $1,000 to $2,000 checks from tariff revenues, describing it as “almost like a dividend to the people of America.” His own Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, told ABC he hadn’t even discussed the plan with Trump.
And now, November 2025: Another $2,000 promise. Same funding source. Same lack of congressional approval. Same absence of any actual mechanism to distribute the money.
The Math Doesn’t Work
Here’s the thing about Trump’s tariff-funded fantasy: the U.S. collected about $195 billion in tariff revenue through September 2025. Sounds like a lot, right?
Distributing $2,000 to every American (excluding “high income people”—a threshold Trump has never defined) would cost somewhere between $400-500 billion, depending on the income cutoff. The tariff revenues don’t even cover half of that. And that’s before considering that tariff costs are largely passed on to consumers, meaning Americans are already paying for these “revenues” through higher prices.
Oh, and the Supreme Court is currently weighing whether Trump’s tariffs are even legal. If they rule against him, there goes the entire funding source.
Why People Keep Falling For It
The IRS has repeatedly warned Americans about stimulus check scams and misinformation. Fake claims about $1,390 or $1,702 payments circulate constantly on social media. The agency’s message is clear: if you haven’t heard it from IRS.gov or Congress, it’s not real.
Yet millions of Americans see Trump’s Truth Social post and think, “Finally, some relief!” They share it. They plan around it. They believe.
Why? Because people are struggling. Inflation has hit hard. Rent is up. Groceries cost more. When someone in power promises help, especially someone who’s delivered stimulus checks before (never mind that those were passed by Congress, not decreed by presidential fiat), people want to believe.
But wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true.
The Pattern Is Clear
Trump’s stimulus promises follow a predictable pattern:
- Make a bold announcement via social media or friendly media outlet
- Provide no specifics on eligibility, timeline, or legislative path
- Let supporters amplify the message
- Never mention it again, or blame Congress/courts when it doesn’t happen
- Repeat with a new promise months later
It’s political vaporware. The promise generates headlines, social media engagement, and goodwill from supporters who credit Trump for “trying” even when nothing happens. Meanwhile, actual relief programs—like state inflation rebates in New Jersey, Colorado, and Georgia—get far less attention despite actually putting money in people’s pockets.
The Gullibility Tax
There’s a reason con artists have thrived throughout history: people want to believe in easy solutions. A $2,000 check from tariff revenues sounds great—free money from foreigners! But it requires ignoring basic math, legislative process, and Trump’s own track record.
The 2020 stimulus debacle should’ve been the lesson. Trump demanded $2,000, Americans got $600 from his administration, and his own party blocked the increase. Yet here we are, five years later, with people treating his latest promise as gospel.
At some point, repeatedly believing promises that never materialize isn’t optimism—it’s willful ignorance. Trump has now promised stimulus checks at least four times in 2025 alone. The score? Promises: 4. Checks delivered: 0.
What’s Actually Happening
While Trump tweets about imaginary $2,000 checks, real relief programs are operating:
- Social Security recipients got a 2.5% COLA increase
- New Jersey’s ANCHOR program is sending up to $1,500 in property tax relief
- Several states issued actual inflation rebates
- The IRS is processing legitimate tax refunds
These programs exist because they went through the legislative process. They have funding. They have eligibility criteria. They have distribution mechanisms.
Trump’s tariff checks have none of that. They’re a tweet, not a policy.
The Bottom Line
If Trump’s November 2025 promise of $2,000 checks actually materializes, I’ll eat my words. But based on his track record—the $2,000 that became $600, the $5,000 DOGE dividend that never came, the $600-$2,400 American Worker Rebate that’s gathering dust in committee, and the October “consideration” that went nowhere—I’m not worried about indigestion.
The real question isn’t whether Trump will deliver on this promise. History has answered that. The question is: how many times will people fall for the same trick before they stop checking their bank accounts for deposits that’ll never arrive?
Trump’s supporters often mock others for being “sheep” or “easily manipulated.” Yet they’re the ones refreshing their banking apps, waiting for money from a program that doesn’t exist, based on a tweet from a man who’s made this exact promise before and failed to deliver.
That’s not faith. That’s not optimism. That’s just being a mark.
And the house always wins.
