Lutnick: Trump’s $5,000 checks wouldn’t rely on taxpayer funds

President Donald Trump’s promised $5,000 “dividend” for all U.S. adults would not be paid for with taxpayer dollars, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Thursday.

“It’s not tax money,” Lutnick told NBC News in a wide-ranging interview at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, where he discussed the attacks and a variety of economic issues.

He claimed that the administration could “earn the money that Donald Trump wants to pay out, not from the deficit and not from taxpayers.”

Trump this week pledged that if Republicans held control of the House and Senate in November’s midterm elections, his administration would issue a “dividend”