Should You Take Trump’s Free $1,000?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’ve seen ads for Trump Accounts for kids, but also know anything about Donald Trump, you might be wondering “Free $1,000 per baby? Okay, what’s the catch?” It’s a classic.
Guest: Justin Wolfers, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of Michigan, and founder of Platypus Economics.
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Podcast production by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I know your kids are older now, but Justin, if you had a baby right now, |
| 0:13.6 | would you sign that baby up for a Trump account? |
| 0:18.0 | If I had a baby right now, first of all, I'm just so excited to just give it a cuddle. |
| 0:24.6 | Justin Wolfers is an economist, yes, but he's also a dad. |
| 0:29.6 | And I know we're going to get to the economics, but I just want to get this out there for all the dads to be. |
| 0:35.4 | One of the things they tell you when you go to the hospital is take your shirt off and go skin to skin. Skin to be. One of the things they tell you when you go to the hospital is take your shirt off and go |
| 0:39.8 | skin to skin. Skin to skin. One of the most magnificent moments of my life. In fact, I remember three |
| 0:44.9 | months into my baby being born. I was at the pediatrician and he handed out of my baby and I started |
| 0:49.2 | taking my shirt off. He's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, makes one of us happy. |
| 0:56.0 | Comes both of us down. |
| 0:57.6 | Anyway, he told me not to do that anymore. |
| 1:02.1 | This story, amusing as it is, is not why I called Justin. |
| 1:13.5 | I wanted to ask him about Trump accounts, the administration's investment vehicle for children that launched last weekend, with $1,000 from the government for babies born during the second Trump term. Justin is a progressive economist, so I was curious what he would |
| 1:20.0 | do with his theoretical child. I would sign up my baby for a baby bond. Let me be clear what that |
| 1:26.9 | means. |
| 1:36.3 | Baby bonds and Trump accounts is one word which hides two policies that have nothing to do with each other. |
| 1:37.9 | Would you be a little angry at yourself if you had to do it? |
| 1:41.9 | I have been doing a lot of therapy. |
| 1:45.3 | I'm not the problem here. |
| 1:47.5 | The president is. |
| 1:49.7 | Politics is. |
| 1:51.5 | And arguably the media is |
... |
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