Did Donald Trump announce he is imposing a 300% penalty on landlords who raise rents excessively? No, that's not true: No White House news releases or videos corroborate that. The rumor arises from a fake news-style video providing no authentic quotes, links, interviews or other evidence Trump made such a proposal.
The claim appeared on a June 3, 2025 TikTok video (archived here) on the @orshwayn744 account under the title "BREAKING NEWS Trump's 300% Penalty: The End Of Rent Profiteering?" The voice-over said:
Trump just declared war on America's rent crisis. Landlords are now in full panic.The Trump Administration is introducing the most brutal landlord profit tax in U.S. history. If landlords raise rents above government-set limits, the excess will face a 300% penalty tax. Raise rent by $10,000? The IRS will take $30,000. The higher they go, the harder they fall. Profits vanish instantly. For years, rent has skyrocketed 35%. Today, 40% of renters hand over more than half their income to landlords. Even worse, Wall Street funds are buying entire apartment complexes, creating artificial shortages and trapping young people in permanent rent prisons. At a White House press conference, Trump pointed straight at the financial giants and declared 'Housing is not an ATM; ordinary people are not crops to be harvested forever.' For decades, no president dared to hit real estate capital this hard. If this bill passes, will landlords survive?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken by Lead Stories)
The video is one of 15 fake news videos posted on the @orshwayn744 account, all featuring attention-grabbing and false reports of purported Trump policies:
(Source: TikTok screenshot by Lead Stories.)
The "News" logo at the bottom is a readily downloadable plug-in from Envato, a digital visual effects creator. Reverse image search on Google, using that graphic, does not connect it to any evidence-based news organization's broadcast, but instead only delivers a long series of promos for downloads of news-like graphics that can be added to videos.
The White House archive of all statements, actions and briefings by President Trump includes zero items about landlords:
(Source: Whitehouse.gov screenshot by Lead Stories.)
Similarly, a Google News search found in its index of thousands of news sites zero instances of Trump, or anyone else, saying what was attributed to him in the fake video:
(Source: GoogleNews.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
Lead Stories has collected a list of its other fact checks about Trump and landlords at this link.
