Former Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang has reached out to the White House to help President Donald Trump as the administration considers a version of Yang’s signature idea: $1,000 checks to all households.
At a White House briefing on Tuesday, President Trump and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin revealed that the administration wants to send checks to Americans “immediately,” rather than providing a payroll tax cut on its own.
The emergency measure would provide cash to households facing an immediate cash crunch due to the loss of work or business with the sudden spread of the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a sudden halt to the economy.
Breitbart News’ John Carney made a similar proposal earlier this month, as has Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) recently.
Yang’s proposal was to provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) of $1,000 per month to every American citizen as a buffer against the effects of automation, which could eliminate American jobs.
On Tuesday, he noted that the president appeared to be adopting his idea — at least as a temporary measure — and he reached out to offer his support.
In a statement, Yang said that he was in touch with the White House.
Yang is the first Democratic presidential candidate, current or former, to offer explicit support to the Trump White House.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is currently the frontrunner for his party’s nomination, has declined to do so, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) effectively called for the president to be replaced by “experts” and Congress.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to mention the president at all in her national address last week.
The only Democrats thus far that have acknowledged the president’s leadership are governors, such as California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo and the president feuded publicly on Monday, but publicly patched up their differences in separate press conferences on Tuesday.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.