Johnson Dances Around Question Comparing Trump’s $5K Check Plan to Communism: ‘He’s the Ideas President’

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) dodged a pointed question from Eric Michael Garcia, The Independent’s DC bureau chief, about President Donald Trump’s promise to give out $5,000 checks should the GOP win in November.

“You’re talking a lot about communism. How is communism any different from what President Trump is doing, getting equity stakes and promising $5,000 checks to Americans and having equity in steel?” Garcia asked Johnson during a Tuesday presser.

“So, what the president is articulating—and he comes up with creative ideas all the time, he’s the ideas president, and we have a hard time keeping pace with it sometimes—he debuted at the convention, famously, the idea of basically a dividend check to Americans, right? We’re processing that,” Johnson replied, ignoring the communism comparison.

“I mean, we’ve just now gotten everybody here, and we’re talking about all that. What he’s trying to articulate is the obvious truth that is demonstrable, and we can stay here all morning. We can talk to you about that. If you want more money in your pockets, you’ve got to keep Republicans in charge. That’s what the President’s talking about,” Johnson continued, adding:

We have done that—not just, again, not rhetoric, it’s record. Look what’s happened. When we did our legislation—the Working Families Tax Cut, for example, the Big Beautiful Bill—it put more money in your pocket. In my state of Louisiana, the average Louisianan has $2,915 more in their pocket right now. They did not have to send it in on their taxes this year, because we got our policies enacted. The average take-home pay in Louisiana is around $8,000 more than Americans have, because of our policies.

We cut taxes, we cut regulations, we limited the size of government. I mentioned a million new jobs added—those are private sector jobs. We’re shrinking government and growing the private sector. That is the free enterprise system, that is the free market, that is what we defend. That is where Democrats have disdain. If you put them in charge—listen, look at what they’re doing. Mamdani in New York, he wants to grow government.

What happens when you grow government? You have to tax more, and they take more of your hard-earned resources. It never works. We started a website, ContrastForAmerica.com—everybody go look at that, because in just a couple of pages we summarize for you the nightmare that is the road to socialism, communism, Marxism. Every single time it’s been tried in history, it leads to human suffering, famine, poverty—the worst—and ultimately to death.

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!