On Wednesday, Trump disrupted America’s TV viewing with an “ignore the evidence, everything is great” fact-challenged primetime address to the nation. In it, he announced every American soldier would be receiving a bonus check for $1,776 in the mail this holiday season — “because of tariffs.” In his words:
“Because of tariffs, along with the just passed One Big, Beautiful Bill, tonight I am also proud to announce that more than 1,000, 450,000, think of this, 1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call warrior dividend before Christmas, a warrior dividend. In honor of our nation’s founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier $1,776. Think of that. And the checks are already on the way. Nobody understood that one until about 30 minutes ago.”
It was a lie. The troops will indeed be receiving a check. But the largesse isn’t being funded by tariffs. In addition, it was money they were already getting. Congress authorized it five months ago. And any implication that it was due to him was self-serving misdirection. Here’s the real story.
The likely reason “Nobody understood that one until about 30 minutes ago” was that Trump waited until the last minute to twist the truth. Thomas Novelly, reporting for Defense One, and citing a senior official, wrote that the funds for these “warrior dividend” checks are actually coming “from Congressionally-allocated reconciliation funds intended to subsidize housing allowances for service members.” In his words:
The senior administration official told Defense One in an emailed statement late Wednesday evening that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the Pentagon to “disburse $2.6 billion as a one-time basic allowance for housing supplement” to all eligible service members ranks 0-6 and below.
“Congress appropriated $2.9 billion to the Department of War to supplement the Basic Allowance for Housing entitlement within The One Big Beautiful Bill,” the senior official said. “Approximately 1.28 million active component military members and 174,000 Reserve component military members will receive this supplement.”
PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins also confirmed the funding source through her own contacts.
“[I]t is not tariff money. It is not a bonus. It IS funding meant to help with high housing costs.”
In short, Congress had already authorized the funds in July, in the Orwellian-named ‘Big Beautiful Bill.’ The bill's language did not specify how it was to be distributed. However, as the BAH is paid monthly, it is reasonable to assume the supplement to the BAH would also be paid monthly. In addition, if it were intended as a one-time payment, why hadn’t it already been sent out?
Regardless, when Trump said this was a one-time, paid-by-tariff bonus, he was not being truthful in the details. And when he said, after celebrating the warrior dividend, “We made a lot more money than anybody thought because of tariffs, and the bill helped us along,” he was putting one hell of a spin on the big picture.
