David Pakman

But it didn't matter.

We would try to slow it down and go, listen, the math is crazy.

It doesn't make any sense.

And they just said, we're going to do it.

But the point was never delivering on it.

The point was, let's keep people engaged and hopeful so that they go, well, I might not agree with the things Trump is doing, but I'm going to get my five or seven thousand dollars to five or seven thousand dollars.

And it was this plausible pot of gold or coal at the end of the rainbow that people thought I might get at some point.

Now, look at where things stand today as we approach mid-April of twenty twenty six.

No two thousand dollar tariff check.

No five thousand dollar Doge dividend.

Doge is shut down.

Elon is gone.

The tariffs have been a complete financial disaster and we're spending increasingly more money carrying out this war in Iran, which the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize did.

That's kind of surprising.

Not what you would imagine.

The conversation is done.

The conversation has shifted away completely.

And I hope and I suggest

that at every opportunity, when journalists interview J.D.

Vance or Donald Trump, when journalists interview members of the Republican Party in the House or Senate, ask them every single time and present them with quotes from things Trump said about these checks and say, what happened to it?