Trump s Offer of $5,000 to Every American Is a Desperate Bid to Save the GOP

With just over 50 days until November’s midterm elections, a cornered Donald Trump headlined an unprecedented two-day Republican convention at Dallas’s American Airlines Center. The convention was tailored to the president as he sought to weather his administration’s severe popularity crisis. Its centerpiece was Trump’s lengthy speech, which he is set to deliver again this Thursday alongside Vice President J.D. Vance.

In a move that analysts — and even several Republicans — described as desperate, Trump promised to pay a direct “dividend” of $5,000 to every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans manage to retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

In his remarks, the president sought to make the legislative contest entirely about himself, demanding the party base’s support. Trump urged voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot,” adding, “I’m on the ballot. Just one more time.” Later in the speech, he unveiled his outlandish financial proposal: “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.” He compared the move to a successful company’s cash distribution to its shareholders.The announcement would require an estimated government outlay of between $1.2 trillion and $1.35 trillion to cover the country’s approximately 240 to 270 million adults. Despite the astronomical size of the sum, Trump never explained where the money would come from — especially as the deficit approaches $1.8 trillion a year and national debt $40 trillion, ominous milestones for an administration that promised to restore the country’s fiscal health.Vice President JD Vance tried to justify the promise by claiming that the money would come from revenue collected through international tariffs. Economists and analysts, however, point out that tariff revenues are nowhere near sufficient to cover a check of that size — particularly since Trump has had to back down from most of his tariff threats, while the remaining revenue would not even cover his recurring deficits.

This party gathering in Texas was not technically a national convention — those are held only during presidential election years to formalize the party’s presidential nominations and platform. Instead, it was a carefully staged spectacle designed to intensify the campaign atmosphere and shore up the president’s weakened support. Polls show an extremely unfavorable outlook for the GOP, projecting clear Democratic gains in the House and a highly competitive Senate race, driven by the president’s approval rating, which has collapsed to between 35 and 38 percent.

There are several reasons behind the decline of Trumpism and of the Republican Party more broadly. First, the military intervention launched jointly with Israel against Iran failed to achieve its objectives and exposed Washington’s strategic weakness in the Middle East. The war severely disrupted energy supplies, driving oil prices above $100 a barrel and causing gasoline prices at U.S. pumps to rise sharply, reaching an average of $4.10 per gallon. The increase quickly pushed up the cost of living, generating deep public discontent.

Trump is not sailing through calm waters within his own party, either. The war in Iran and his unconditional alliance with Israel shattered Trump’s coalition of support, deepening the divide between the isolationist “America First” faction and the militarist wing of the MAGA faction.

Finally, Trump has also been facing growing social resistance to both his most brutal and authoritarian policies and the crackdown on migrants across the country. His Bonapartist policy of mass deportations, carried out through ICE’s repressive methods, sparked a wave of public outrage. These measures were met with mass mobilizations such as the “No Kings” marches — which drew millions of protesters nationwide — as well as strikes and worker and community organizing in cities like Minneapolis. This, however, did not stop Trump from insisting on continuing the raids and escalating the violence in states where he acts in coordination with local authorities.

Against this bleak backdrop, the tactic of promising election-season checks amounts is simply an act of desperation. This is not the first time the tycoon has made such promises: early in his second term, he pledged a $5,000 “DOGE dividend” funded by cuts pushed by Elon Musk; he later hinted at $2,000 checks financed by tariffs; and he subsequently dubbed a $1,776 payment to military personnel a “warrior dividend,” even though it was merely a housing allowance that Congress had already approved. None of his promises of cash payments to civilians ever materialized. Trump has become an expert at making promises he never fulfills, or quickly walks back.

The convention itself exposed the growing fractures within the Republican Party. Several lawmakers and candidates in competitive districts chose to stay away from the Dallas event so they would not be associated with Trump’s tarnished image just weeks before Election Day.

The desperation on display in Texas reflects the reality facing the White House: if the forecasts materialize and Republicans lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in November, Trump will become a true “lame duck” for the remainder of his term. This is a nightmare scenario for an authoritarian-minded leader who tries to project omnipotence to the world, but is repeatedly forced to recalculate and retreat in the face of resistance from other global powers, domestic opposition, and the contradictions of his own administration.

Originally published in Spanish on September 10 in La Izquierda Diario.