Game show politics: Donald Trump's DOGE "dividends" check will cost MAGA

President-elect Donald Trump in his first term as president sent out two stimulus checks to millions of Americans during the COVID pandemic.

Some social media posts are claiming that Trump , once he takes office next year , may issue another check.

The payoff came not in the 2020 election but four years later in 2024 in 2024 .

In a new series of emails Donald Trump is hinting that he will give the American people “free” money, money “saved” from gutting of the federal government.

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.

The Democrats , liberals, progressives, and the mainstream political class more broadly have no equivalent experience machine of countering it.

Trump 's suggestion that he may give the American people another “stimulus” check 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.