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Friday, September 11, 2026
Laura Ingraham confronted Donald Trump over his $5,000 check “dividend” pledge made from the GOP Midterm Convention stage Wednesday night, asking, "Why not give the money now? If you have the money, give it now." Matt Walsh on X posed the same question, and Chris Hayes ran Ingraham’s question an hour later on MS NOW, and not in a way that mocked the Fox News host.) Drudge splashed “VOTES FOR SALE” and "NEW MAGA SOCIALISM" (which linked to my “Wealth Distribution” column). National Review’s Charles Cooke mocked the offer with "Trump breaks glass, joins socialists, embraces bribery." Even conservative satirical news site The Babylon Bee made fun of the very socialist nature of Trump’s pledge. It’s not unfair to say that a divided nation was temporarily united by the political folly of the president single-handedly undermining months of socialist fear-mongering against the Democrats, with this naked payoff for voting Republican. The harmonic convergence has finally arrived.
01. Trump Forced to Defend Bipartisan Socialism Charge After Laura Ingraham Confronts Him on his $5k Dividend
[Gaining Traction]. The right’s original objection was based on the federal deficit math, but today it turned ideological, with Laura Ingraham putting the socialism charge to the president in person.
The party spent most of the GOP midterms convention’s first night calling Democrats socialists. Laura Ingraham sat down with the president before night two and asked him three times about his promise to give every adult American a $5k check if the Republicans stayed in control of the House and Senate. “They are saying you want to buy the election,” the Fox News host and loyal Trump supporter asked. “Why not give the money now? If you have the money, give it now.” Trump bizarrely responded that Democrats couldn’t do it because with them “it’s negative growth.”
Matt Walsh noted that Trump’s been in power for two years before mocking the dividend “as a carrot on the stick for after the election is just shameless.” MS NOW’s Chris Hayes ran the clip of Ingraham confronting Trump and asked, “Why do we have to wait until after the election?” That’s three influential people from three different universes each coming to the same conclusion. Unity!
National Review ran “Trump breaks glass, joins socialists, embraces bribery,” which CNN’s Audie Cornish read aloud, adding, “That’s not Mother Jones. It’s the National Review.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said borrowing another trillion and a half “will lead to more inflation.” Ben Shapiro said it won’t happen and both parties are now bidding for votes with debt. The CATO Institute came out against it, and even the Babylon Bee mocked Trump’s “equal distribution of wealth” offer. Woof.
TAKEAWAY: On CNN’s This Morning, Lulu Garcia-Navarro correctly noted that the $5k offer looked like desperation. Given that China election interference gambit didn’t pay off in late July, and this $5k dividend is earning bipartisan mockery, and the fact that Trump’s approval ratings are in a death spiral, one can only wonder what they will think of next. Necessity is the mother of invention.
02. Iran Becomes the Midterm Liability Republicans Ignore. Trump Just Gave It an Election Date
[Gaining Traction]. The timeline for ending the Iran War has long been left to speculation, but Thursday the president directly tied it to his political gains.
Laura Ingraham asked Trump how long the Iran War will continue, to which the president insisted it will “End right after the election.” She then read him the Wall Street Journal reporting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance expect it to run past January 2029. Trump doubled down, saying, “I’m not going to say when it will end, but I think after the election. Limping along, deep trouble.”Ingraham then directly connected the disastrous Iran war with GOP’s midterm woes, saying “If we had not Iran you would be cruising 2.25 gas.”
Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice, asking him to strike Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who are trying to capture another strait in the region. Trump said no.
TAKEAWAY: Oil is now above $100 a barrel, and diesel crossed $6 a gallon Thursday for the first time ever. Is Trump holding back military plans because he’s prioritizing his political goals? Well, that's a narrative that deserves more attention not less.
03. The 9/11 Anniversary Brings White House Convention Scheduling Incompetence to the Forefront
[Losing Support]. Yesterday’s convention problems focused on crowd size and ratings. Today, the problem shifted to a lack of coverage because of long-standing 9/11 25th anniversary programming.
Somebody at the White House and/or Republican National Committee chose these dates. Night one of the GOP midterm convention ran against the NFL Kickoff Game on NBC, Seattle hosting New England, a Super Bowl rematch. Night two, Thursday, ran against the first NFL game ever played in Australia, 49ers and Rams from Melbourne, on Netflix.
Night one got a ton of coverage, not least of which was tied to Trump’s $5k bribe. But guess what cable news shows planned for the 25th anniversary of 9/11? It wasn’t coverage of day two of the convention.
Across the three 6 am hours, the 9/11 anniversary was mentioned 114 times. The word convention was mentioned 7 times. Morning Joe gave the entire hour to the anniversary and did not say Trump’s name. Fox & Friends said “convention” twice and “$5,000” not at all. T
Ray Washburne, the convention’s own chairman, said Republicans had better places to be. Oh, and Thursday was also the anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s passing, which reportedly made Turning Point's leadership livid.
TAKEAWAY: Trump said during his speech last night, “Everybody said, you have a midterm convention; it will be a disaster. Look at that.” He didn’t mean it the way it reads, but it reads more accurate than what he meant.
“What I don’t think you want to do is borrow another trillion and a half dollars and then just try to flood that into the economy, because that will lead to more inflation. That will lead to more debt.” Governor Ron DeSantis said that on camera the day after Trump promised the money from the convention stage, which aired on CNN Thursday night.
Trump’s $5,000 dividend promise/bribe was connected to Republicans holding the House and the Senate, which, judging by the reaction, seems a failed closing pitch with 53 days left to the midterms. DeSantis is a sitting Republican governor who ran against Trump in 2024 and is expected to run again in 2028.
The data tells the real, better stories beneath the headlines.
Trump's Grand Conspiracy Prosecutor Quits. Joe diGenova resigned Thursday from the Justice Department investigation into officials who investigated Trump, then told the New York Post, "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem." The probe has issued dozens of subpoenas since last year and brought no charges. (ABC News)
Supreme Court Blocks Missouri Map. The Court blocked the new Republican-drawn Missouri map with no noted dissents, reversing the appeals court ruling that let it stand a day earlier. (Politico)
Fetterman’s GOP Convention Appearance Raises Questions About His Future. Senator John Fetterman appears to have gone all in in crossing the aile to support Trump. Does this mean he’s about to formally switch the letter next to his name from D to R? (The Hill)
Based on transcripts from the 6 and 7 a.m. hours of Fox & Friends, CNN This Morning, News Central, and Morning Joe.
During his prime-time speech Thursday night, President Trump asked the convention hall to raise their right hands and repeat after him: “I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell as they do.” Just ninety seconds earlier, he’d said Democrats “want to cheat” and “we want honesty in our elections.” The RNC is currently fighting roughly 200 election lawsuits premised on ineligible people voting.
CNN News Central aired the clip in the 7 a.m. hour, as Kristen Holmes reported “he’s got the crowd laughing, with calling himself the greatest president and saying cheat like hell. But the truth of the matter is he keeps asking for this.” That was the only mention in the first two hours of morning shows across three networks.
It’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11, but only one mention suggests cable news will dismiss this bizarre loyalty pledge as Trump hyperbole and not the batshit crazy moment it truly is (though both things can be true.)
The loudest critics of Trump’s $5,000 check gambit are coming from the right. Laura Ingraham, Matt Walsh, National Review, CATO, Ron DeSantis, the Babylon Bee. Democrats called it a bribe and mocked the “socialist” hypocrisy, but that seems to matter less than this naked attempt to buy votes and add more than a trillion dollars to the federal deficit, getting hammered by conservatives. Even Fox News’ leading voices seemed unimpressed by the idea, but declined to amplify all the conservative critics, which might be the most charitable approach the network could take for an increasingly unpopular “populist” president. Given the recent White House attacks on Fox News, and the fact that Trump’s prime-time speech aired exclusively on Fox News, it failed to rate better than the network's regular programming. Well, that's a massive signal that Fox News doesn’t need to go all in on Trump to draw viewers who seem to be just as over the Trump show as the rest of the nation.
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