“Reparations” is the term that Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., used on Friday to describe the taxpayer-backed settlement fund of more than $1.7 billion that President Donald Trump wants to use to pay people he and his allies perversely claim have been wronged by the federal government. 

The administration has refused to preclude Jan. 6 rioters and other extremists who stormed the Capitol in 2021 from potentially qualifying for money from the fund. That means, thanks to Trump, people who waged a deadly and fundamentally racist effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss could end up raking in piles of tax dollars. Meanwhile, his war against Iran has devastated the U.S. economy and Americans’ wallets with it. A bunch of right-wing activists already have their hands out.

Even some members of the typically obsequious Republican Party seem unnerved by the prospect of the fund.

But not Meuser, who told pro-Trump outlet Newsmax that the fund is about “reparations” for people supposedly wronged under former President Joe Biden’s administration. 

The phrasing lends credence to the perception that Trump’s taxpayer-backed fund of more than $1 billion for people purportedly wronged by the government is actually just a Trojan horse to funnel “reparations” to white criminals. 

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.