'Perverse': Fox News hosts turn on Trump after latest plan
The Daily Beast reports Fox News may be turning against President Donald Trump’s plan to pay new mothers a $5,000 bonus.
A Fox Business panel dragged the idea both for its ineffectiveness and for its similarity to “liberal” ideas from Democratic administrations.
“This feels like a Biden-Kamala-era stimmy to get people to do what you want them to do,” said co-host Jackie DeAngelis.
Vice President JD Vance announced earlier this year that he wanted "more babies in the United States of America." He called on the federal government to incentivize pregnancy and help families afford children.
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"I want more happy children in our country, and I want beautiful young men and women who are eager to welcome them into the world and eager to raise them. And it is the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids, to bring them into the world and to welcome them as the blessings that we know they are," Vance said.
But a $5,000 baby bonus “won’t get anyone who is on the fence about starting a family to start a family,” said Fox co-host Dagen McDowell. McDowell added the government already offers prenatal Medicare and tax credits to incentivize having a child.
A single child can cost a U.S. parent nearly $300k over a 20-year period, according to research
Co-host Taylor Riggs criticized the plan as “a perverse incentive to have children because you want a check,” which may harken back to the days of the “welfare queen” stereotype pushed by the Reagan administration.
Hosts also ribbed Department of Government Efficiency head and Trump ally Elon Musk for having 14 children with four different women.
“What I don’t understand is this collapse Elon keeps alluding to. He’s doing his best to try to avoid the collapse—he has many children with many different mothers," said investor Jonathan Hoenig, who said the U.S. population has grown steadily over the last half century.
Read the full Daily Beast story here.