On Oct. 20, seemingly out of nowhere, President Donald Trump announced he was “looking at putting in a very major tax cut” for “middle-income people” that he hoped to implement “sometime around the first of November, maybe a little before that.”

“A major tax cut — we are going to be putting in, and are studying very deeply right now, around the clock, a major tax cut for middle-income people,” Trump told reporters after a rally in Nevada. “Not for business at all, for middle-income people. Now, the last [tax cut] was for middle-income, and for business, and our business is now coming back because of it. But we are looking at — and Kevin Brady is working on it, Paul Ryan is working, we’re all working on it — and we’re looking at a major tax cut for middle-income people who need it.”

There was a major problem with Trump’s promise — Congress wasn’t in session when he made it, and wouldn’t be until weeks after the Nov. 6 midterm elections. So there was no opportunity for any new legislation, including tax cuts, to be considered in anything approximating the timeline Trump laid out.

Alas, it’s now November, and no new tax cuts are on the horizon.

That empty promise is in keeping with Trump’s midterms strategy: make appealing yet preposterous or unrealistic commitments in hopes of ginning up support for Republicans. For instance, even though he’s spent years railing against the law that protects people with pre-existing conditions from discrimination in the health insurance marketplace, Trump is now promising that Republicans “will protect people with pre-existing conditions far better than the Dems!”

Republicans will protect people with pre-existing conditions far better than the Dems! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders claimed on Monday that “the president’s health-care plan that he’s laid out covers pre-existing conditions,” despite the fact that Trump hasn’t laid out any health care plan whatsoever.


On Wednesday, with U.S. debt hitting post-recession highs in part because of the previous round of GOP tax cuts, Trump vowed, “We’re gonna start paying down debt. We have a lot of debt. We’re gonna start paying down debt.”

Not only does Trump have no plan to pay down debt, but the new round of tax cuts he wants to implement would make the problem worse.