In an otherwise inexplicable speech to the American people, Donald Trump promised to pay special bonus checks to members of the U.S. military. This raised the question of where the money was coming from and whether it had been appropriated by Congress. But don’t worry: Trump isn’t stealing the money, he’s just lying to us.
Politico explains:
President Donald Trump’s promise Wednesday to pay troops a “warrior dividend” bonus is actually a military housing stipend already approved by Congress, and not a generous new White House program.
The rebrand, confirmed by a senior administration official and two congressional officials, follows a pattern for the president, who has previously claimed credit for routine military pay increases that weren’t his doing.
The $1,776 per person bonuses, unveiled by Trump in his nationwide address Wednesday night, will be covered with funding approved in the Big Beautiful Bill that passed in July, according to the congressional officials and later confirmed by the Pentagon.
The payouts—which will cost roughly $2.6 billion—will be a “one-time basic allowance for housing supplement to all eligible service members,” said the official, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. …
Trump, in his speech, implied the money for the military bonuses was coming from new tariff revenue. But White House officials would not confirm that, and the congressional official said tariff revenues won’t have anything to do with the payments.
It would be a major abuse of power for Trump to spend money that hasn’t already been appropriated by Congress. It is a smaller abuse of power to take money appropriated for one purpose and “rebrand” it for another.
But it is also an abuse of power for the president to lie to the American people, brazenly and repeatedly—especially when he is doing so in order to buy votes with the taxpayers’ money.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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