What did Donald Trump do today?

He sent his Treasury Secretary out to tell most Americans a lie about their tax returns.

Trump has not taken questions from reporters in weeks, a period of time that coincides with the initial rollout (and subsequent coverups) of Epstein documents. Trump's DOJ is not complying with the law requiring their release, first missing the deadline and then "finding" over a million more documents than it had previously acknowledged. Instead, he's hidden behind social media binges, a "holiday" that is extended even by his standards, and his own staff.

Today, one of those staff members, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, tried to put a happy spin on an economy most Americans are worried sick about by claiming that their tax refunds would be much bigger this year. 

That's true, for two reasons, neither of which are good news.

The first is that when tax rates change, whether up or down, the amount withheld from paychecks is out of sync for a while with the final tax bill. Ideally, a tax refund is zero, meaning that employees kept exactly as much of their income as appropriate. 

In other words, Bessent is asking Americans to feel grateful that they'll be paid back what amounts to an interest-free short-term loan to the federal government.

The second reason is that tax rates changed because of Trump's 2025 budget bill. But they didn't change very much for the vast majority of Americans: only the very wealthiest saw any real drop in their tax bills. And what little benefit there was for low- and middle-income Americans was wiped out by the average increase in prices due to the massive import taxes (also known as tariffs) that Trump imposed on virtually all foreign goods. A conservative estimate of the impact of those taxes amounts to about $1,200 per household. 

That means that, refund or no, the actual amount that more than 60% of Americans are paying under Trump's new tax regime will be going up, not down. And that doesn't take into account the enormous increases in health care costs that tens of millions of Americans will see in the coming year as a result of Trump ending subsidies in the same bill.

Why does this matter? 

• You only tell people to ignore what they're seeing with their own eyes if you're very stupid, or you think they are.