Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.
The dubious promise would likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.
Sorry, I’m apparently unfamiliar with how democracy works. You are allowed to pay people to vote for you?
I guess technically he’s just running on a “give every American adult 5k” platform ? Of course I wouldn’t put it past him to try to only give them to GOP voters
Let’s be real. No one would get actually get it.
Funding only available in safe red districts.
he’s already run on “give every american adult $2k” twice and it worked once
If you convince enough wealthy people apparently “democracy” means you can just do whatever you feel like.
You are allowed to pay people to vote for you?
No, and this is a violation. Either paying $5k dividend is a good or bad idea. Congress will vote on it. You can’t say that it is only a good idea if Nazis keep control of congress.
Yep. This is how Doug Ford is Premiere of Ontario. He literally went into low income housing and gave out $20 bills.
Yeah, democracy, according to the Americans . They also allow their “leader” to make “executive” decisions like a dictator 😆.
Short answer : no.
Long answer : legal doesn’t really matter when Congress and the SC are in your pocket and refuse to hold you accountable for explicitly breaking the rules over and over again.
Yes, but it depends on how you do it. For the USA, if it were following its own laws, which it’s not, Trump can not give every person $5000 if the Republican party holds a majority in the House and Senate. That’s because following the laws the House would need to appropriate the funds first, pass that, send it through the Senate, have it pass there, then be signed by the president. In a normal America, the President can say they will pressure Congress to appropriate the funds and pass it but it can’t be a unilateral decision.
Nevermind the financial cost. He’s literally offering to bribe the public in broad daylight, an impeachable offense under article 2 section 4 of the US constitution:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
There’s no interpretation of this section that can make Trump soliciting votes by way of bribery not an impeachable offense… But he’ll get away with it again because his cronies in Congress will refuse to impeach him.
I’d love for that to happen, but realistically, any blanket term the public should want that you campaign with could be construed as bribery.
“Vote for our party and if we win, we’re going to get universal healthcare and medicine and do away with medical insurance filth”
See. Now the public is being bribed with a functioning government that works for its citizens.
These things are not analogous. Trump isn’t saying “vote for me and if I win I’ll use my newly invested powers to give you xyz”.
He’s saying “vote for my friends and I’ll use the power I already have to give you xyz”.
There’s definitely a difference, the second being much more coercive. Imagine if instead he threatened to send people to fight in Iran if republicans didn’t win the midterms. Whether this is illegal I don’t know, but it should be.It’s also much weaker rhetorically. You can’t say “I haven’t given you the $5k yet because I didn’t have power before”.
I’ve already heard lawyers chiming in and saying it isn’t technically illegal.
But yeah, theres a lot of things that should be illegal.
Less than a year ago he promised $2k checks from his tariffs. MAGA has the attention span of a guppy.
Man, between this, the $5000 DOGE checks that will never come, and the $2000 tariff checks that will ALSO never come? We’re all rolling in it, boys!
It’s raining imaginary money!
You forgot the $1776 check for America 250.
And the DOGE checks we were supposed to get after DOGE was gonna save us trillions of dollars.
Oh the tariff checks came… they just went to the businesses after they inflated their prices to account for the additional tax, got to keep the refund themselves even though prices went up still, and then never lowered prices
This asshat raised my taxes $8500 a year and wants to give me $5000 one time? Yea, sure. Sadly MAGAts will fall for it again.
Just making the offer of money for votes is a federal crime. You don’t even have to actual do it. But of course no one in power has the balls to do anything.
Very illegal… By the way, anyone who accepts and receives that payment is also guilty.
End Game: Every American who accepts bribe is locked up. I refuse and I am free to run around and do whatever I want.
Would end a Democratic administration (at any level of government, by the way, not just federal).
Yet Republicans can do whatever the fuck they want I guess.
How’s the national debt and stagflation, Don?
Take your $5k and shove it up your ass. Tossing us crumbs to distract us from your total disaster of a presidency.
What an economic moron.
The real economic morons are the ones who are excited that they are getting $5k if the repubs stay in congress.
And this. $5k means nothing with stagflation and worsening conditions for workers, no plan to address climate change, massive economic inequality, out of control healthcare costs, ballooning deficit due to insane, needless military spending, disgusting fascism, blatant corruption. etc.
$5k is like two months rent for some people. Okay, what then? Back to the same old usual shit.
They won’t fucking get 5k
And that all assumes a complete change of heart from the GOP that hasn’t paid those doge checks or tarriff refunds.
Yeah $5k for every American with no new taxes is just a massive burst in inflation. It can be done strategically in a situation like covid where the economy needs to be maintained from collapse due to a temporary situation of no work, but that’s about it.
In a depression you spend money, but you do it by making jobs to get nice to haves.
Anyone get their Tariff refund?
Anyone get their DOGE check?
Any soldier’s families get their death benefit payout being killed in trump’s not-war against Iran?
How about the time he said “Food for everyone!” at a Miami restaruant, then walked out without paying the bill?
D E S P E R A T E
And fucking liar, he will not send anyone a check period even if they did win. But fuck that vote folks are lives at stake here.
Still waiting for my DOGE and tariff rebate checks that he promised.
Fuck that, even if my vote could be bought I know how often he stiffs his independent contractors.
Like he was going to end the war on Ukraine in 24 hours and release the Epstein files?
Like Iran would take a week?
Like Mexico would be paying for that wall?
Like America would be great again?
Still waiting for a replacement for the ACA, which was supposed to be so easy to do in the first week… Of his first term.
Not even Trump has enough child prostitutes to offer up to the wealthy stakeholders to make this happen.
Trump’s proposal would be legal because the payment would go to everyone regardless of how they voted, or whether they voted at all, said New Mexico-based attorney John Day.
“This is a campaign promise,” Day said. “It’s not a payment to individuals to try to get them to vote in a particular way.”
Just going to ignore the “if Republicans retain control of the House and the Senate”, huh, AP?
They will never pay up.
THAT’S BRIBERY
Yep. And you know what they say about bribery:
Article II, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
The key thing is “…on Impeachment for, and Conviction of…” Which isn’t going to happen if things stay as they are.
I don’t know. This is pretty brazen, and the midterms aren’t looking good for the Republicans. If enough GOP congressfolk think they’d be better off facing the midterms under the stalwart leadership of President Vance, I could see them moving en masse behind an impeachment push. The ball has to start rolling somewhere though, and I don’t know which representative would be likely to introduce articles and palatable to enough Republicans that they could join under the color of bipartisanship.
All that presumes a congress that doesn’t suck though, and when in doubt, congress sucks. Being the first mover is dangerous, especially with Trump still at the helm. I’m not saying it’s likely, but it could happen.
Any Republican worth anything would do it “as a patriot.” Bipartisanship is fine, but “patriotism” is their whole thing. When a president does something this bold it should be easy to benefit by being someone who actually stands up for what they speak about so often. Obviously this is in a sane world though, and it also requires that they care about real patriotism, not nationalism.
This is especially true when the guy you need to stand up to has a 32% approval rating. It’s not hard to look good when you’re kicking the guy no one likes, and it honestly might be the move to flip centrists away from the “woke” progressives that are winning primaries.
Not that I want that. I’d rather have the progressives win and start sending fuckers to the Hague. But I’d be shocked if there wasn’t some conservative think-tank mapping out this possibility.
The 14th Amendment doesn’t even require impeachment or any sort of conviction. It says that if you previously held office and then engaged in insurrection, you instantly have a disability that keeps you from holding any office, and Congress is only able to vote to remove that disability.
Essentially, it works backwards from the rest of the constitution and due process and all that shit. It kept Confederates out of US government, despite how they were not impeached or even criminally convicted of insurrection. Exactly as intended.
But you saw how effectively that was enforced when Chief Justice Roberts swore Trump in last year. Conservatives in power just ignore any laws that are inconvenient to them.
bribery is totally fine of youre a conservative because no one will do anything about it.
Lmao
They bought his cheap made in China maga clothes
They bought his $500 dollar gold sneakers which turned out to be trash
They bought his expensive ecd knife which turned out to be gas-station-knife quality
They bought his crypto which turned out to be pump&dump and lost money
They bought gold phone which turned out to be plastic and 2 years out of date
They’re buying the minted coin which they lose money on
Something tells me they’ll still fall for this one thinking it will be the one that’s genuine.
They bought his $500 dollar gold sneakers which turned out to be trash
who does he think he is, Michael Johnson?
I think you mean Mike Basketball.
You might be a little young for this reference
Michael Johnson was an Olympic sprinter known for wearing gold shoes. Shit I knew people, grown adults, who spray painted their runners gold after he won.
Oh, okay, never really followed much of that stuff. Thank you for the link.
no worries. i knew i was making an obscure reference but i didn’t know how obscure.
To be fair, a lot of Trumpty schemes are just ways to either grift or get bribes.
Something tells me they’ll still fall for this one thinking it will be the one that’s genuine.
No idea how you came up with such a radical idea. Seems like a long shot to me.
/s
I mean, Trump’s entire life could be described as writing checks with his mouth that he can’t actually cash.
He literally loves going bankrupt.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-king-of-debt-224642
“I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me,” Trump told Norah O’Donnell in an interview that aired on “CBS This Morning.” “I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing.”
“How do you renegotiate the debt?” O’Donnell followed up.
“You go back and you say, hey guess what, the economy crashed,” Trump replied. “I’m going to give you back half.”
Clinton blasted Trump’s economic views in a speech on Tuesday, accusing him of gambling with the full faith and credit of the United States by flirting with a default on the debt.
“That could cause an economic catastrophe, and it would break 225 years of ironclad trust that the American economy has with Americans and with the rest of the world,” Clinton said. “Alexander Hamilton would be rolling in his grave. You see, we pay our debts.”
I mean, rare Hillary W, but uh yeah, we’ve known for 10 years what his plan here was… it’s been really obvious the whole time, actually.
Anytime a Republian mentions fiscal responsibilty, you have my permission to do debt collection for the tooth fairy, from their face.
