Republicans Balk at Trump's $5,000 Midterm Checks
Republicans Balk at Trump's $5,000 Midterm Checks
The News
President Trump used the Republican Party's midterm convention in Dallas to double down on his promise to send $5,000 checks to American adults — and ran into resistance inside his own party.
NOTUS reported that Trump returned to affordability messaging as voters' economic attitudes sour, and doubled down on the checks "even as some members of his own party question how the proposal would work."
Political Wire, citing The New York Times, reported that Republicans "spent the first five hours of their midterm convention in Dallas warning about socialism" before Trump "surprised many of them with an audacious trillion-dollar proposal to redistribute wealth."
Trump's claim that he can send the checks out without congressional approval "was met with swift and loud skepticism," Mediaite reported. That is the core of the dispute: whether the payments are a policy that needs legislation or something the president says he can order alone.
Reactions
On Fox News, host Jesse Watters pressed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on whether he would support the $5,000 checks in return for Republicans keeping control of Congress; Cruz tried to shift the proposal into a different form he could back, Raw Story reported. Watters separately called the promised check "an enticement," according to Mediaite.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed the plan as "bulls—" and a "desperate" power grab, the New York Post reported.
BBC North America editor Sarah Smith wrote that the promise was bizarre even by Trump's own unconventional standards, and asked whether it is a sign of panic. Semafor reported that the Republican midterm promise is "more populism, and more cash."
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TMZ reported that Trump went off on an ABC News reporter who asked him a question about the $40 trillion national debt.
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