Last week, Joe Biden announced an executive order to cancel up to $10,000 of federal student loan debt for borrowers making $125,000 or less a year and up to $20,000 for couples making $250,000 or less. (Borrowers who received Pell Grants can have up to $20,000 forgiven.)

To no one’s surprise, the right-wing outrage machine immediately kicked into high gear. Tucker Carlson, in a hardly coherent rant, acknowledged that student debt “is hurting young people and there’s really no good reason for it” and that “the obvious response [to Biden’s executive order] would be to celebrate the announcement” — before attempting to convince his viewers that the forgiveness was a giveaway to college administrators and “lawyers or gender studies majors” that hardworking taxpayers would be paying for. In a similar vein, Carlson’s Fox News colleague Sean Hannity blasted debt cancellation as a “reverse Robin Hood” measure that will benefit “elites” and will be paid for by “the hardworking American people.”

Both pundits argued that the policy was a ploy by Biden and the Democrats to shore up their voting base, with Hannity calling the cancellation the “Biden Bribery and Vote Buying Act of 2022.” Donald Trump Jr offered the most entertaining version of this take on Instagram, posting an image that implied, in no uncertain terms, that student debt forgiveness was an effective ploy to get “millennial voters” to support Biden in 2024.