According to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump didn’t come up with the eye-roll-inducing idea to put his name on the slim $1,200 stimulus checks meant to help people facing a global pandemic as unemployment roars. As Daily Kos covered previously, the addition of Trump’s name could delay people receiving paper checks in the mail. On CNN this Sunday morning, Mnuchin stressed that Trump could have signed the checks. According to Mnuchin, however, the signature would have “slowed things down,” so Trump’s name will appear as typeface on the memo line instead. And as Mnuchin claimed to Jake Tapper on State of the Union, the idea was actually… his?
Tapper asked Mnuchin point-blank: “Did the president personally suggest this idea?” According to Mnuchin, that’s a no.
“That was my idea,” Mnuchin claimed to Tapper in the clip below. “He is the President, and I think it’s a terrific symbol to the American public.”
Here is that clip.
Though Mnuchin stressed that Trump could have signed the checks, as covered by The Washington Post, Trump hypothetically signing the checks could be an issue, in that the president is reportedly “not an authorized signer” for these disbursements.
And if you’re wondering whether or not your stimulus check got lost in the mail, Mnuchin told Tapper the paper checks actually hadn’t been sent out yet. “The checks have not gone out yet,” Mnuchin clarified. He also encouraged people to get their money using direct deposit, which in his words, is “much safer.” Never mind people who don’t have bank accounts.
You may remember that Mnuchin recently suggested people can live off of these $1,200 checks for weeks.
Though compared to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s unfounded paranoia that, tempted by “$24 an hour” unemployment assistance, nurses may quit their jobs during a novel pandemic to collect easy money, Mnuchin claims ring in as just an exasperated shrug.
And Trump? At a press briefing last week, he told reporters he was sure “people will be very happy” to receive a “big, fat, beautiful check” with his “name is on it.”
