Dem
52
Ties
2
GOP
46
Donald Trump is still flogging the $5,000 checks he promised in his faux-convention speech last week. Speaking to reporters shortly before departing Ireland, he decreed:
The $5,000 checks are going forward. And that's because we're taking in so much money in so different ways, including the tariffs... I know exactly how we're going to pay it. You know it's interesting on that because every said that the great Big Beautiful Bill will never happen. It happened. They said that the 1776 for the military. $1,776 would never happen. And it happened. They were paid. And now they say, oh, the $5,000—The $5,000 is going to happen 100%.
For the record, nobody said the "Big Beautiful Bill" would never happen. And the money for the military was an already-approved-by-Congress housing allowance that Trump just repackaged into a single payment. Meanwhile, he's conveniently forgetting other promised payments that did NOT happen, like the Trump tariff dividends.
We bring this up because there were a couple of developments over the weekend that bear watching. The first is that the nation's #1 Trump flunky, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), said that he and his colleagues are thinking about ways to (potentially) come up with the $1.2 trillion needed to pay for the plan. That could just be Trump butt-kissing, since Johnson knows full well that the scheme will never come to pass. However, the Speaker also said that if there is going to be a $1.2 trillion outlay, Congress absolutely must approve it. Since Trump thinks otherwise, Johnson's statement is a declaration of (Congressional) independence that has not generally been characteristic of his time as speaker.
Second, Trump says he knows where he'll get the money, but he's being very coy about specifics. However, he did uncork another wild notion this weekend. During his press conference in Ireland, he told reporters that the U.S. might just "stay" in Iran and "keep" their oil, much like what is happening in Venezuela.
This is lunacy, of course. Treating Iran like it is a colonial possession is not plausible, as more than one great power has learned over the years. However, it is possible that this is the "secret" source of funding Trump has in mind to pay for his $1.2 trillion pledge. And the only way to control Iranian oil is to control Iran. So, Trump may just have telegraphed that he is pondering (or has already decided on) a ground invasion. We may be connecting a few too many dots here, but the "100% happening" and the "keep Iran's oil" remarks came in such close proximity to each other, we think it's at least plausible. And so, once again, worth keeping an eye on. (Z)