Game show politics: Donald Trump's DOGE "dividends" checks buy time with MAGA

My phone rang at 4 AM. This was during the worst of the COVID pandemic, when most Americans with good sense were hiding from the poison air. I was watching television and reading. When the phone rings at 4 AM, it rarely means anything good. The call was from my aunt. I held my breath to calm down, exhaled, and then I asked her, “Is everything OK? Are you alright? Did you get sick or something?” My aunt is in her 80s. She is a bit of a trickster. With age, she has only become more of her true self in that way. She giggled and told me, “Papa Trump just paid off. I got my COVID money!” I was annoyed that she called me at such an obscenely early hour to tell me that she got her Trump money.

My aunt does not like Donald Trump. Like many other Black working-class folks that I know, she thinks that Trump can be “a bit off” at times and does bad things. But, she admits, he is very funny. She also likes that “Donald Trump says what everyone is thinking, but most politicians don’t have the nerve to say publicly.” She was amazed by how Trump got up from the ground so quickly and pumped his fist in the air after being shot at in Pennsylvania during the 2024 campaign by that “crazy man who should never have been allowed to get that close to the president” and how “the whole thing was like a scene in an action movie or comic book!”

After my aunt shared her glee at getting her “Trump bucks,” I asked, “Are you going to vote for him now? And what are you going to spend your big Trump bucks on?” She immediately answered, “Hell no! But I do need some more money. I have to make up for being so behind because everything got so expensive, and I needed all these supplies for COVID.” Some months later I asked my aunt who she voted for in the 2020 election. She changed the subject and wanted to talk about neighborhood gossip instead.

When Donald Trump gave the American people COVID stimulus money — with his signature on the check — I knew that was a defining moment which would, quite literally, pay-off for him. The payoff came not in the 2020 election but four years later in 2024. The American people were traumatized by the mass death and pain of the COVID years. As is common for individuals and societies under extreme duress, many Americans have actually forgotten or misremembered Donald Trump and his administration’s willful incompetence and malign behavior during the COVID pandemic. However, they remembered Trump’s COVID relief checks.

Public opinion, focus group, and other research — as well as anecdotal evidence — suggests that Donald Trump’s COVID relief money and the expectation that he would be giving out more money if he won the 2024 election, likely played a role in his victory over Kamala Harris.

In a story that was published following the 2024 election, CBS News provided this context:

President-elect Donald Trump in his first term as president sent out two stimulus checks to millions of Americans during the pandemic, part of the federal government's goal of keeping consumers financially afloat during the crisis. Now, some social media posts are claiming that Trump, once he takes office next year, may issue another check — a likelihood that experts say is extremely slim.

Posts on TikTok are suggesting Trump might issue another round of checks, while on X, some users are questioning if they're in line for a payment….

While some consumers might believe that Trump or Biden alone was responsible for sending out stimulus checks — perhaps because Trump put his name on the memo line of the first check — the payments were part of three bills passed by Congress, which were then sent to the sitting president for his signature.

"A president can't unilaterally issue stimulus checks, and the ones sent out during his last administration were largely the result of a push from Democrats in the House and Senate," Channel noted. "Though Trump ultimately did sign the bill that sent stimulus checks to Americans, he isn't solely responsible for them."

In other words, there would first need to be legislation passed by Congress to authorize another stimulus check, something that currently isn't on the horizon.

In a story from October 2024, The Detroit Free Press reported:

Oprah Winfrey recounted an interaction with a Black man who told her he’s voting for Trump at the airport ahead of a Farmington Hills campaign event with Vice President Kamala Harris last month.

“He goes, ‘I’m voting for Trump because he gave me that check,’ ” Winfrey told the audience. “I’ve heard that from several people: that I got the check. He gave us the check. And so therefore, forget about everything else. It’s about the checks.”

The Trump supporter’s comment is a familiar one for Black voters across the country and in Detroit.

It’s been suggested by popular rappers in interviews and songs. Detroit’s Babyface Ray’s 2021 hit “If You Know You Know” features the hook: “I’m tipping, pass it out like Trump.”

And it all stems from the up to $1,200 and $600 pandemic relief checks sent out in March and December 2020. Another round of checks for up to $1,400 went out in March 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden…

“That money was taxpayer dollars,” said former state Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo. “During COVID, Congress passed legislation to move that money. We need civics back in school because people don’t even understand the process. The money didn’t come out of Trump’s pocket, he didn’t go and tell Congress, it was the other way around. Trump insisted on signing the checks."

Like a game show host, in a new series of emails Donald Trump is hinting that he will give the American people — specifically his MAGA followers — “free” money, money “saved” from the gutting of the federal government:

This new email reads:

DOGE dividend check?

Friend, should I give DOGE savings back to you?

Check signed by Trump!

Trump’s new email then has a link to a poll asking:

SHOULD TRUMP GIVE DOGE SAVINGS BACK TO AMERICAN CITIZENS VIA CHECK?

As a master propagandist and expert manipulator of the media and information environment, Donald Trump is very intentional with his strategic messaging. Trump would not be sending such emails if he did not have research suggesting that such messaging would be effective in keeping his MAGA followers’ loyalty, bringing in new supporters, and/or generating more distraction and spectacle that he can use as cover and camouflage for his autocratic project.

Those outside of the MAGAverse and TrumpWorld, especially the mainstream liberals and centrists in the news media and political class, will, as they have consistently done, mock Trump’s free money bonanza emails and other outreach and fake populist appeals. Such voices tend to believe that anyone who would trust Trump’s promises of free money are dumb, dupes, rubes and/or easy marks. These same public voices and elites have a credibility and legitimacy problem. They are the same people who underestimated Donald Trump’s broad appeal and power in 2024.

Donald Trump’s repeated hint that he is going to send the American people more money reflects a larger strategy with him at the center of a vast propaganda experience machine. The Democrats, liberals, progressives and mainstream political class more broadly have no equivalent experience machine. Nor do they have an easy way of countering it.

There is also the self-sabotage. For example, in a speech at the Brookings Institution in December of last year, President Biden shared his regrets at not signing the COVID relief checks. Rolling Stone reports:

“Within the first two months of office I signed the American Rescue Plan,” Biden said. “And also learned something from Donald Trump — he signed checks for people, $7,400 for people because we passed the plan. I didn’t — stupid.”

Biden’s statement was incorrect on several fronts. The maximum amount given to an individual with no children through the three combined pandemic-era stimulus payments was $3,200. Two of those checks were authorized under Trump’s administration, and the third under Biden.

Trump did make a show of having his name printed on the first round of checks issued in mid-2020, marking the first time a president’s name had appeared on an IRS disbursement. While the president-elect was criticized for treating economic relief born of an act of Congress as a personal payment to Americans, his signature’s presence on the checks had staying power.

Biden’s top economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, told reporters that Biden was just “kidding” when he shared his regrets. It would seem that Biden told too much truth.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised the American people a final COVID relief check of 2,000 dollars. He reneged on this promise, and the American people only received a final check of 1,400 dollars. President Biden said it was all a big misunderstanding. This failure to fulfill a promise, and then pretend that it was not made, could not have helped Biden’s electoral fortunes and those of Kamala Harris and the Democrats in the 2024 election.

Trump’s suggestion that he may give the American people another “stimulus” check (or DOGE “dividends”) resonates because of the country’s extreme levels of wealth and income inequality. Research has repeatedly shown that most Americans do not have 1,000 dollars that they could use for an emergency without going into (further) debt, selling something, or borrowing money from a friend or relative. As a function of the race-wealth gap, African-Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, Native Americans and members of other marginalized communities have even less in savings than the average white American. This level of extreme economic anxiety and fear does not resonate in a direct and personal way with the news media and political elites as a group. Many (if not most) of its members come from affluent backgrounds and have other forms of privilege and social capital. To many of them, the very idea that an everyday American would trade their democracy and freedom and civil rights for a few hundred (or even thousands of) dollars seems absurd and ridiculous.

"Democracy” is an abstract concept that many Americans cannot explain even in the most basic terms. However, those same Americans are experts on their daily lived experience of being terrified that they will not be able to pay their bills at the end of the month or weather the hardship of a financial emergency. For them, “Trump bucks” would be a literal lifeline.

In politics, there is the truism and question, “What have you done for me lately?” If President Trump sends out another “stimulus” check, he and the MAGA Republicans will be able to say, “I gave you money.” The Democrats and the so-called Resistance possess no comparable answer, brand, or competing message.

I have a deep and horrible intuition, based on Donald Trump’s long pattern of behavior and public statements (and specifically his carny showman professional wrestling instincts) that he is going to declare a national holiday to honor himself and the MAGA movement. Trump will likely call this holiday something like “American Freedom Day.” As part of that holiday, Donald Trump will also announce that he is giving the American people money as a gift. If Trump does follow through on this scenario, he will likely have cemented the next election for himself (what will be a third term in violation of the Constitution), his designated successors, and the MAGA Republicans for a long time. No voter nullification, voter suppression or other skullduggery and interference will be needed. The 2024 election may have signaled a fundamental realignment in American politics. More “Trump bucks” could make that realignment a near certainty.