I've got some bad news for you today that will probably be as unsurprising as it is disappointing: Your check from Donald Trump is not in the mail.

The president has spent much of the first year of his second term promising to send Americans "dividend" checks, but nothing ever comes of it. And that's because Trump sees the unrealized promise of cash as an effective way to distract Americans from issues he is not resolving and problems he is causing.

Don't take my word for it. Trump is the majority owner of his own social media website, Truth Social, which has its own artificial intelligence chatbot at the ready to answer your questions.

So I asked it: "Does Donald Trump have a history of promising dividend checks but then not sending them?"

Here's the answer Truth Social AI gave me: "Yes. Trump has repeatedly floated 'dividend' or rebate-style checks to Americans but has not delivered such payments to the public to date."

The chatbot then summarized Trump's history in 2025 of dangling checks and then leaving Americans dangling, from his false claims that we were getting a $5,000 dividend from alleged savings found by DOGE, also known as the Department of Government Efficiency, to his Nov. 9 suggestion that we'd get "a dividend of at least $2,000 a person" fueled by his disastrous trade-war tariffs.

Trump made that claim last week in an early morning Truth Social post. Here's what his Truth Social chatbot concluded a few days........

© USA TODAY