(This story was updated to accurately reflect the most current information.)
Oprah Winfrey recounted an interaction with a Black man who told her he’s voting for Trump at the airport ahead of a Farmington Hills campaign event with Vice President Kamala Harris last month.
“He goes, ‘I’m voting for Trump because he gave me that check,’” Winfrey told the audience. “I’ve heard that from several people: that I got the check. He gave us the check. And so therefore, forget about everything else. It’s about the checks.”
The Trump supporter’s comment is a familiar one for Black voters across the country and in Detroit.
It’s been suggested by popular rappers in interviews and songs. Detroit’s Babyface Ray’s 2021 hit “If You Know You Know” features the hook: “I’m tipping, pass it out like Trump.”
And it all stems from the up to $1,200 and $600 pandemic relief checks sent out in March and December 2020. Another round of checks for up to $1,400 went out in March 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Many have credited Trump for those funds, as well as Congress' Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which Trump signed into law. The PPP funds were meant for small businesses to stay afloat amid pandemic closures and an uncertain economy. He eventually signed the stimulus package along with an annual spending bill, scrambling to get his name on the checks in the days before payments went out.
“That money was taxpayer dollars,” said former state Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo. “During COVID, Congress passed legislation to move that money. We need civics back in school because people don’t even understand the process. The money didn’t come out of Trump’s pocket, he didn’t go and tell Congress, it was the other way around. Trump insisted on signing the checks.”
Martell Bivings, a Black Republican who is running in the 13th congressional district against U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Detroit, has also heard the suggestions from voters. It all comes down to people having more money in their pockets under Trump, he says. “And for Democrats or anyone to try to discredit someone else's lived experience is extremely disrespectful,” he said.
“Yes, Congress did pass it, but Trump was prudent enough to know that if he fixed his name to it, many people would see it as Trump got them the checks,” Bivings said.
Trump threatened to kill a second pandemic relief package after demanding the stimulus checks be increased from $600 to $2,000. Bivings sees the former president as a popular figure in the Black community able to loosen the Democratic Party’s grip on the Black vote. In 2020, Trump received a 40% increase in the number of votes he earned across Detroit than in 2016.
“We’re going to get the most votes he’s ever gotten before in Detroit. He’s going to the inner cities to earn these votes and he’s going to keep doing that,” Trump campaign spokesperson Victoria LaCivita told the Free Press.
Kamau Clark of advocacy group We the People MI says he’s heard from people who credit Trump for the stimulus checks too. Direct funds are unique and something everyone could feel — the challenge with Biden’s wins are they are something that not everyone feels, he says.
“Biden has had some good policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act or lowering medicine costs. But stimulus checks were something everybody feels,” Clark said.
Clark thinks part of the problem is the mystification of what happens inside the political arena.
“Most folks aren't aware of the process of American politics, what power the president holds and the same is true of legislators,” Clark said.
“Big 'D' Democrats need to do a better job at talking to regular people about regular issues,” said political consultant Brendan Snyder. “Some of the people we need are talking about Trump. We need to empower people in our neighborhoods to do the same thing.”
The Harris campaign has been door knocking across Detroit neighborhoods and hosting events with high-profile voices like U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California; U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey; and U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Florida. It has also tapped faith leaders and local influencers to speak to Black voters like the cast of TV series Scandal, reality TV star and Big Brother champion Taylor Hale, viral rapper GMac Cash and others.
“We’re out here in Detroit and Flint every single day reminding Black voters not only how Trump hurt our community last time, but how his extreme agenda, divisive rhetoric, and racist tropes would turn back the clock on decades of progress for the Black community,” said Harris spokesperson Eddie McDonald.
But Gay-Dagnogo says the Harris campaign hasn’t tapped in with the right surrogates from around Detroit to go and sit down and talk to potential voters.
“The problem is no one is empowering the right surrogates to be able to go out and have these conversations at scale,” Gay-Dagnogo said. “Democrats have a right to be confident going into this election, but you can’t be so confident that you do nothing,” she said. “When no one is responding to or countering that message, it stays out there and that’s a problem.”
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the title for Brendan Snyder.
Samuel J. Robinson is a freelance contributor to the Free Press focusing on election misinformation. Reach him on X: @samueljrob.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Congress sent checks, Trump took credit. He's reaping the political reward 4 years later
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