The Golden State Warriors have won 5 consecutive games after a disappointing start. Now, Steve Kerr has found a sixth reason to celebrate. But he resorted to ‌good old sarcasm. Kerr had a $5,000 reason to be disappointed with the 2026 midterm election results. He was expecting a payment promised by Donald Trump, but the Republican Party’s defeat meant it was off the table.

Kerr made sure reporters knew exactly how he felt, turning a routine media availability into a sarcastic swipe at the president.

The moment came a day after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, ending the Republicans’ hopes of retaining their majorities. Kerr did not wait for a reporter to bring up the political result, either. 

He raised the subject himself before delivering the punchline.

After the basketball questions ran their course, Kerr noticed nobody had asked about the election: “Wow, all right, no questions about the election?” 

He then explained his disappointment at the presser a day ahead of the match-up against the Heat:

“No, I’m disappointed because I was looking forward to that $5,000 check we all were gonna get. I thought for sure. I already spent it. In fact, I was so excited about it that I… sure about it, that I spent it already. So now I’m gonna have to figure something out.”

The sarcasm was loud in that statement as he walked out of the room full of laughing reporters. 

Steve Kerr was mocking Trump’s pledge to send $5,000 to every adult American if Republicans held on to the House of Representatives and the Senate.  

POTUS initially presented the proposal as a dividend funded by the administration’s tariff policy. Trump argued that the US collected the money through tariffs and was willing to return it to Americans. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance also pointed to tariff revenue as a possible funding source. 

But the numbers raised immediate questions: payments to roughly 245 million adult citizens would cost around $1.2 trillion, far beyond the tariff revenue the government collected at the time. Congress would also have to authorize the spending.

That made the promise difficult to separate from the election itself. 

Trump’s proposal ultimately tied a Republican victory to a $5000 check in his campaign. Therefore, the Democrats’ gains gave Kerr an opening to joke about money that the authority never guaranteed.

Steve Kerr has never been afraid to talk his politics

The joke also fits a longer pattern. Kerr has repeatedly used his public platform to speak about American politics, gun violence, racism, and the country’s leadership. 

His criticism of Trump is not a new development that emerged after the midterms.

One of the most prominent examples came at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Kerr endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, speaking about the qualities he expected from political leaders before borrowing a familiar celebration from his Warriors star, Stephen Curry.

Yes, he pulled out a Night Night.

“After the results are tallied that night,” Kerr said, “we can, in the words of the great Steph Curry, we can tell Donald Trump, ‘Night, night.’” 

It wasn’t Steve Kerr’s first public clash with Trump either. 

Their relationship had already become contentious in 2019, when Trump criticized the coach after Kerr declined to offer an immediate response to the controversy surrounding the NBA’s handling of a tweet by then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting protesters in Hong Kong. 

Trump remarked, “I watch this guy Steve Kerr, and he was like a little boy. He was so scared to even be answering the question.” Since then, it’s been a back-and-forth

For Kerr, the missing $5,000 check was an easy punchline. 

But the joke carried a pointed reminder: Trump had made the payment conditional on a Republican victory, and voters delivered the opposite result.