We already know what a complete scam President Trump’s announcement of his initiatives to provide financial aid through the next pandemic months truly is. To cite just one scammish particular—the $400 weekly unemployment insurance boost he proclaimed—David Dayen in yesterday’s "Unsanitized" documented how the FEMA funds Trump is proposing to devote to that sum will soon run out, and David as well as everyone else has noted that the federal contribution actually comes to $300 per week, with states required to come up with the additional $100 to qualify for the federal funds—a requirement that governors of both parties have said they can’t meet. (A recent study of state government finances has said that the revenues those governments depend on have declined by $200 billion since the onset of the pandemic, and states, unlike the federal government, can’t run deficits.)

This is hardly the first time that Trump has put a headline on a program he’s announced that touts a dollar figure which, it then turns out, isn’t really coming from the federal government. He’s only putting up $300 for the UI supplement? Well, his annual announcements of his administration’s big, beautiful $2 trillion infrastructure programs actually require the states to come up with $1.8 trillion of that sum, with the feds kicking in just $200 billion. Of course, if the states had $1.8 trillion lying around to fix their roads, build new rail lines, and the like, they would long since have done that.

But here’s the question: Since Trump likes to advertise programs with headline dollar amounts for which he has no intention of actually providing, why doesn’t he make his headline dollar amounts even higher? Since he’s only committing $200 billion, why not announce a $5 trillion infrastructure program, which is what most infrastructure engineers believe is the amount the nation requires? Since he’s only coming up with $300 of the UI supplement, why announce the figure is only $400? Why not $600, which is what the unemployed had been receiving?

Why such modesty, Mr. President? You’re a fabulist. Shoot the moon!