President Donald Trump seemed to briefly power down when confronted by reporters over whether voters could still expect him to deliver on one of his boldest promises to date.
“I did do that?” the MAGA president asked in newly released audio, recorded during a sitdown with The New York Times last week, in response to questions about when Americans might expect the $2,000 checks he said they would receive from revenues raised by his flagship tariff policy.
“When did I do that?” he added.
Trump did that at 1:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Nov. 9, 2025. “People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS!” he wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that his policies have now seen the U.S. “taking in Trillions of Dollars,” and that “a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.”
Seasoned economists generally do not regard tariffs as a practical long-term fiscal policy. The financial burdens of levies, such as the kind the president has imposed on dozens of allies and enemies alike since April, have historically shifted onto consumers and domestic producers over time, rather than foreign exporters.
Trump’s claims about the extent of revenue from his trade policies are also false. Tariff revenue for 2025 stood at $195 billion, according to data collected by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that monitors fiscal policy policies.
That’s a 150 percent increase over duties collected the previous year, but at a minimum 90.25 percent less than the “Trillions” Trump claims his levies have generated.
While Trump’s checks to everyday Americans have yet to materialize, his administration did make a symbolic payment of $1,776, after the year of the nation’s founding, to military personnel just before Christmas.
The MAGA administration framed those funds as a “warrior dividend” from tariff revenue. They were not, with the money having in fact come from “Congressionally allocated reconciliation funds intended to subsidize housing allowances for service members,” according to a report from Defense One.
During their Oval Office interview, The New York Times pressed Trump again on what sort of timeline he might have for further checks being sent out to those without a military background.
“Well, I am going to,” he responded. “The tariff money is so substantial that’s coming in, that I’ll be able to do $2,000 sometime, I would say toward the end of the year.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
