In a typical administration, political advisers would start worrying right about now about how to tell voters in next year’s midterm elections about the president’s accomplishments. They would be making plans to stop by a factory or the groundbreaking for a new bridge in a key state. Or they’d be workshopping campaign messages with focus groups.
But Republicans don’t have a good story to tell about President Donald Trump’s second term. Their major legislative achievement was massively unpopular — and it’s only going to get worse. The public already knows about Trump’s efforts to slash government services and deport millions of immigrants, and opinions on both are negative right now.
Instead, Trump’s advisers and political allies seem to be embracing a new tactic: promising that the check is in the mail.
Over the last few months, Republican fundraising emails have told voters to keep their eyes out for make-believe “DOGE dividend checks” from Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn government efficiency effort. In one email from the Trump-Republican joint fundraising committee, Trump said, falsely, that he signed into law a measure for “no taxes on Social Security.”
Now, they’re promising yet another imaginary benefit: tariff rebate checks.
The idea first came up in late July, when Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced a bill that would give Americans a one-time $600 refundable credit on their income taxes next year — the same amount as the second round of stimulus checks during the coronavirus pandemic. (The checks would phase out for married couples making more than $150,000 a year.) Trump, who always knows a popular idea when he hears it — even if he has no intention of following through — quickly endorsed it, saying, “We’re thinking about a little rebate.”
To be clear: This is not going to happen.
First, if the tariff rebates were similar to the coronavirus stimulus, they’d cost the federal government about $164 billion, which is most of the money generated by the tariffs in the first six months of the year. There’s little interest in even more new spending among Republicans in Congress, who passed a megabill earlier in July that is now estimated to cost $4.1 trillion over the next decade.
But don’t take my word for it; Republican senators shot the idea down immediately. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma called it “a bad idea,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said the country “can’t afford it,” and Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio called it “insane.” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said the money should be used to pay down the debt, instead, since Americans “don’t feel like they’re being hurt by tariffs.”
And while Trump said he liked the idea, he also called Hawley a “second-tier senator” around the same time, so it’s doubtful that the two are going to work together anytime soon.
But these ideas have a way of living on in the twilight areas of the internet.
For most congressional journalists, this story was a one-day blip, like the DOGE checks. Once their reporting indicated that the idea was a nonstarter, they moved onto more pressing issues. But these ideas have a way of living on in the twilight areas of the internet, promoted by campaign emails that generate Google searches and lead to stories on local news sites thirsty for clicks, in a vicious cycle of misinformation.
“Fellow American,” read one email I received recently. “Would you accept a tariff rebate check from President Trump?” Clicking either “yes” or “no” took me to the same website, where I could say whether I would like to receive anywhere from $600 (not happening) to $5,000 (definitely not happening) and whether I would invest it, save it, pay off debt, book a vacation or donate it to charity, before asking if I would like to donate to a Republican Senate candidate. The emails are an implicit admission that tariffs are raising prices for Americans, which is why Hawley had to go out of his way to claim that they are actually supposed to help people hurt by former President Joe Biden’s policies, instead. I’m no purehearted scold. I understand that campaign fundraising emails are always going to aim at the lowest common denominator. And plenty of Democratic candidates have sent me emails asking whether I would like to donate $25 to overturn Citizens United, which is equally unlikely. But it’s striking to me that Republicans have complete control of Washington and yet they can’t pass anything that might be popular enough to run on. It’s clear from these emails that at least some of their consultants know what voters would like, which makes it all the more striking that they can’t quite bring themselves to do it. That failure may be an opening for Democrats. For years, Republicans have attacked them for promising “goodies” to voters, which has led the party’s establishment to avoid criticism by creating ever more elaborate programs, tax credits and subsidies when it wants to achieve some goal, like getting more people health insurance or fighting climate change. But as Republicans look to hit campaign donation goals ahead of the midterm elections, the one thing they keep promising is cold, hard cash. Now imagine how popular a president might be after delivering on that promise.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline. 
