President Donald Trump has pledged to send out a $5,000 check to every American citizen if his Republican Party keeps hold of their majority across Congress in November’s midterms, a gesture already inviting questions and controversy.
Taking the stage for the opening night of his unusual midterms convention at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, Trump promised voters: “If Republicans win both the House and the Senate, because of our tremendous economic success, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States for $5,000.”
The president offered few details about the offer, already being dubbed the “Trump Dividend,” but did say the cash would have to be spent on home soil, not overseas.
He did not explain how that rule would be enforced nor, perhaps more significantly, where the Treasury would source the money from, offering instead a straight sales pitch: “If the Republicans win, you win with us.”
Trump also provided the stick to go along with the juicy carrot he dangled, presenting his audience with an apocalyptic vision of what would happen if the GOP’s candidates were swept aside by a surge of support for Democrats, as polls have indicated they might well be.
“If we lose, you’re going to lose your border, you’re going to lose your tax cuts, you’re going to lose your safety and security, you’re going to lose your wealth,” he warned. “Our country is going through hell – we will be going through hell, just like we did, just two years ago.”
The Independent has reached out to the White House for more details about Trump’s scheme, which has already been met with considerable skepticism.
For starters, it would cost the government an estimated $1.3 trillion to honor the pledge, given that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 258.3 million American adults as of 2020.
Such a giveaway would normally have to be approved by Congress, whose consent Trump has often been reluctant to seek and which he could not hope to secure without Republican control of both chambers.
Meanwhile, as The Financial Times has already pointed out, such a stimulus effort would risk further inflaming inflation and worsening the country’s finances and comes amid growing bond market anxiety over government spending, with 10-year borrowing costs hitting a near three-year high earlier Wednesday.
Then there is the murky question of the pledge’s legality, which is by no means obvious. “It’s not clear that it’s legal to make a promise like that because it is against the law to try and offer a payment to anybody to influence how they’re going to vote,” the BBC’s North America editor Sarah Smith has said.
However, she added that the president “may say that this is an election promise, rather than an election bribe,” which has not stopped bribery accusations flooding in.
Elon Musk, the president’s one-time ally, faced allegations of vote-buying on Trump’s behalf during the 2024 election – which he denied – after carrying out a $1 million-per-day sweepstake for voters who signed a petition expressing support for the Constitution.
A federal judge has ordered the world’s richest man to testify about the promotion in the face of proposed class-action lawsuits.
That said, an election law expert has told The New York Times the president’s promise would be covered by the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
Despite the concerns, the “Trump Dividend” appeared to meet with a positive reception in Dallas.
Rusat Ramgopal, who traveled to the convention from New York, told the FT: “It communicates to the American voter that should the Republicans win, they will be handling the affordability issue, and they will be able to do so because they will be able to enact a policy agenda that will be money back in your pockets. It was a line that clearly went over well in the room.”
Which overlooks the fact that the president has a track record of promising the public cash without delivering.
He did send out stimulus checks bearing his signature during the Covid-19 pandemic but more recently claimed that money saved by DOGE cuts to the federal bureaucracy and raked in by his since-blocked reciprocal tariffs policy would be paid out to voters, neither of which came to pass.
Trump did pay out $1,776 “Warrior Dividend” checks to serving members of the military last Christmas, however, a gesture he invoked in his convention speech to prove he could deliver.
