'Are you serious?' Fed-up CNN anchor clashes with guest over DOGE cuts
Investor James Fishback, who first proposed paying Americans "restitution" from the government savings rooted out by DOGE, danced around CNN anchor Brianna Keilar's question about the wisdom of sending each American a $5,000 check.
Fishback has made the rounds on cable news to promote his plan for "DOGE dividends." Over the weekend, CNN's Michael Smerconish called it a "Ponzi scheme."
Keilar began, "If you're talking about paying down the debt and being fiscally conservative here, we just need to be clear about what this is, because I think a lot of people think a check would be nice. Who doesn't think that, right? But when you're thinking about fiscal concerns — because this is certainly being marketed as if you're paying people like 20% of a surplus that you have — but that's not what it is. It's really like if you had a $36 trillion credit card bill and you had enough money that you'd save to pay off maybe something modestly more than the minimum payment, but you decided to take 20% of what you could pay and pocket it. That's really what it's more like, and I don't think people understand that." ...