Trump is giving money to win votes in the mid terms

I.e., taxes wouldn't rise as much as they might do. Impossible to measure, of course.

Lovetopaint037

He said he would give it to every adult person in America. It doesn’t matter who has voted for him so long as the Republicans get reelected. This promise is as ridiculous as so many of his other promises. He can’t just give millions of dollars away. The suggestion that Americans will be better off by 5 thousand dollars is probably what he claims will be through the economy or taxation.

It's not him giving it, it's not his money.
He's promising treasury money that will have to be made up somehow. He's probably happy to hand the debt down to future generations (who won't matter because they won't be lucky enough to be "Generation Trump")

Cossy

Whatever and however it’s being “sold”, it’s sounds incredibly like a “bribe” and surely even in America this isn’t allowed?

TBH many of us have been shocked lately at what’s allowed in America - most especially an apparently deranged, narcissistic, megalomaniac president STILL in the White House!

Surprisingly this is not unprecedented.
Apparently during the covid pandemic the Democrats in Georgia offered $2,000 dollars to citizens if the Senate was won.

Does anyone believe this would happen. It seems Trump has something of a history of promising money that never turns up.

This comment from a BlueSky post

Trump promises every adult American $5,000 but only if Republicans win both the House and Senate

We’ve heard the dividend promises before.

Trump offered of a $5,000 DOGE dividend in 2025, but it was never enacted.

Then came the promised $2,000 tariff dividend, which also never materialised

bsky.app/profile/implausibleblog.bsky.social/post/3mv5iqfyphc2l

I don't understand why anyone believes anything he says, these days...

Witzend

Cossy

Whatever and however it’s being “sold”, it’s sounds incredibly like a “bribe” and surely even in America this isn’t allowed?

TBH many of us have been shocked lately at what’s allowed in America - most especially an apparently deranged, narcissistic, megalomaniac president STILL in the White House!

Robert Reich, an American political economist who worked for the Ford and Carter administrations, has a theory:

Either every last Republican at the federal level is treasonously irresponsible (which I really don’t want to believe) or they’re trying to ride things out until the election, and then they’ll take action.

They’re afraid that if they do something to Trump now, the MAGA hordes will stay home on Election Day and they’ll all lose their jobs. So they wait until the election, for better or for worse, and then they join the Dems in invoking the 25th, or in impeachment and conviction.

JenniferEccles

Surprisingly this is not unprecedented.
Apparently during the covid pandemic the Democrats in Georgia offered $2,000 dollars to citizens if the Senate was won.

That’s not quite the case, the Covid stimulus payments were initially proposed by Donald Trump, and were endorsed by all the candidates, the Democrats won.

Here’s the synopsis.
www.google.com/goto?url=CAESmwEB6zswFT-vnsD1kGRB4us7Y0WcZrvWN_8F_xv0nGOr6NsWpeTqdVs4Aarm3iq12Mem90sH0AoPNaniE5QUY1PD9W2Q7z2UEgLv4WsvBMdtI0Ue6ZBfOtx2BynZSDl-IgXPfOIFiPRZUKsyuUxb2RpfFiKJegqJzT9foG7LwP6Re1TnwUJZGSLyBqcFkf2D7TAWSpxQZy571H3aVQ

I don’t agree at all with the principle of paying voters to cast their vote in a particular direction, it’s a corrupt practice - but the USA is a law unto itself.

He has done this before. The $2000 DOGE checks for example. And he just raised our taxes to give breaks the billionaires.

What we are seeing here is massive desperation. I heard, though didn't bother to verify, that they were having trouble selling tickets to the GOP convention. And Dallas is a blue area where I believe the GOP just voted to close 75% of their polling locations in a massive attempt at voter suppression.

I am not hopeful about the election because nothing makes sense the last 10 years, but I want to be.

Paying people to vote is illegal in the US. I think this could end up in the courts like most of Trump's crazy ideas!

The only person to ever pay someone for their votes in the US is Elon Musk in Pennsylvania. In my memory of course. I can't speak to all of history.

Trump and the Dems gave us stimulus checks during Covid, but that had nothing to do with buying votes.

Trump promised checks from DOGE, except they are finding out that Musk saved virtually nothing, so no checks ever came.

It must be awful for you and yours imaround, have family in the US and they are so sick and tired of Trump et al, but then they didn’t vote for him. However, so many did, and that is scary because not all of them are pee’ed off with their leader.
Is perplexing for many across the Atlantic because we thought that there were checks and balances in place for the POTUS to prevent what is happening now. But it seems as if Trump can say and do whatever he wants.

Is perplexing for many across the Atlantic because we thought that there were checks and balances in place for the POTUS to prevent what is happening now. But it seems as if Trump can say and do whatever he wants.

Isn't it the case, though, that the bodies which are supposed to implement the 'checks and balances, which I suppose to be the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Supreme Court, are all controlled by Republicans who are prepared to ignore the law to keep Trump and themselves in power?

Those checks and balances have been eroded over 40 years by the Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation. They have spent the decades since Regan working to fill judge vacancies with thier preferred judges and supporting candidates that will support thier mission. And it has all been funded by billionaires. Lots of information on the web about how it went down, and quietly too. Most of the general population had no idea.

We are about to test those checks and balances to see if we can save our Democracy.

Yes Maizie, the entire system has been overtaken by a corrupt GOP who are refusing to use those cheks and balances.

There are people who would happily tell you that that is just conspiracy theory, imaround.

They'd also tell you that nothing like that is happening in the UK as they watch Farage raking in money from foreign domiciled donors and the financial markets doing their uttermost to preserve and enhance wealth while trying to sabotage moves towards limiting wealth and improving the financial and physical wellbeing of the greater part of the UK population.

How many empty seats were there in that arena for the GOP convention?
Whole sections. 🤔

Trump Promises Voters a Brazen $5,000 Bribe

Closing out the first night of the GOP’s first-ever midterm convention in Dallas, Trump made a promise that would be laughable if it weren’t so brazen: he’ll send every adult citizen in America a $5,000 check, but only if Republicans keep control of both the House and the Senate.

“Here is my promise,” he told the crowd. “If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them... I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

Branding it the “Trump dividend,” he compared it to a company handing cash to its shareholders. He claimed the government can afford it “because we’ve done so well and because our country is making so much money.” The only catch was that the money had to be spent inside the U.S. “We don’t want you going to Canada to spend the money,” he said. “We don’t want you going to China, to Germany.”

There are just under 270 million American adults, which means Trump’s little cash splash would run up a tab of around $1.3 trillion. That’s on top of the $1.8 trillion the government is already borrowing every year, and a national debt now sitting near $40 trillion. And of course it isn’t even his to promise. A payout like this needs congressional approval, and every economist not on the White House payroll will tell you dumping that much cash into the economy would send inflation roaring back.

Then there’s the matter of it being a crime to pay people to vote a certain way. Trump didn’t offer $5,000 to every American. He offered it on the explicit condition that his party wins. That’s not a dividend. That’s a bribe with a teleprompter.

Even Fox News, broadcasting live from the convention, couldn’t help but note that the last time Trump promised everyone free money — a $2,000 tariff “dividend” last November — the checks never showed up. Before that it was the “DOGE dividend” that Elon Musk floated and that vanished the moment DOGE collapsed. The pattern is always the same: announce the free money at full volume, collect the applause, and quietly let it evaporate once the cameras are off.

Congress made it a federal crime to pay anybody for their vote back in 1925 with the Corrupt Practices Act, because the Gilded Age had already taught us that when elections can be bought with cash, the people who end up owning the government are the ones with the most cash. A president dangling a check in front of 270 million voters is testing whether a century-old law still has any teeth when the man breaking it also runs the Justice Department.

The BBC News website currently has a pic of Mr Trump once again with that most peculiar expression that makes him look as if he suffers from excessively painful flatulence.

I've never seen any other politician pull a face like that.