特朗普承诺共和党胜选就发5000美元支票——其承诺可信度存疑

Trump’s crooked-feeling promise of $5,000 checks if Republicans win

2026-09-10T17:28:22.966Z / CNN

President Donald Trump bizarrely offered Americans thousands of dollars in direct payments Wednesday night at the Republican midterm convention. It wasn’t the first time.

Ten months ago, Trump was peddling tariff dividend checks of $2,000. He declared that Americans “will be paid” the money and that anyone against his tariffs were “FOOLS.”

Turns out, anyone actually counting on that money were the real fools. Because it never arrived.

Indeed, Trump’s promise Wednesday of $5,000 to every adult US citizen if Republicans keep their congressional majorities is just one example in a long line of dubious promises on cash payouts.

And while this one is no more likely to actually materialize, it stands out in another way: Even in a political environment where politicians have increasingly made more direct overtures to their voters’ wallets, Trump’s phrasing makes it sound a lot like a political bribe — as even he would formerly admit.

Trump has repeatedly floated giving people money — and failed

This is at least the fourth time in the last 19 months that Trump has floated giving Americans cash.

In early 2025, he proposed giving Americans rebates funded by the money supposedly saved by his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He labeled the proposal “$5,000 DOGE DIVIDEND CHECKS!”

Except DOGE, whose savings the administration grossly overstated, didn’t save anywhere near that amount of money. The rebates never came.

Then came the $2,000 tariff dividend promise. Like the DOGE dividends, they were premised on Trump’s overstated claims about him making the federal government suddenly newly flush with cash.

But this one was more of an ironclad pledge (“will be paid”) rather than just an idea. And Trump broke his promise.

By the next month, December, Trump was back at it. He floated giving Obamacare recipients $1,000-$1,500 rather than renewing their expiring healthcare subsidies.

In the end, people got neither.

Now, Trump is doubling down. Not only did he make the $5,000 pledge at the convention, but he announced Thursday that the administration was planning to send $500 rebate checks to up to 1 million people who claim they were overcharged for their Obamacare coverage. And in recent days, the administration floated effectively paying stay-at-home parents $9,000 per year.

Trump did successfully send some direct payments to households during his first term, which amounted to thousands of dollars for some: the Covid pandemic stimulus checks. But despite Trump putting his name on those checks, it was a bipartisan effort passed through Congress and was aimed at providing financial relief during an unprecedented time.

There is little reason to believe the thousands of dollars will actually materialize. The $5,000 checks alone would cost more than $1 trillion. The entire discretionary budget for the federal government in the 2026 fiscal year is $1.6 trillion, so this would explode that portion of the budget — right after the national debt hit $40 trillion. It would surely require Congress’s sign-off, which seems very unlikely. It would also risk spiking inflation.

CNN 5 Things

‘Trump-a-palooza’: Is Trump Serious About a $5K Midterm Payout?

President Donald Trump has made himself front and center at the GOP’s first ever midterm ‘convention’ in Texas this week. However, some prominent Republicans and candidates in tight races are skipping the event amid high costs and fear Trump’s unpopularity could weigh down their campaigns. We break down Trump’s message, his promise to pay American adults $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms, and whether the GOP is already looking past Trump. — Guest: Steve Contorno, CNN Senior Reporter Host: David Rind Producer: Paola Ortiz Showrunner: Felicia Patinkin Editorial Support: Jeff Simon

Sep 10, 2026 • 12 min

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But putting cash in people’s pockets probably isn’t really the goal. It’s the illusion of Trump doing so.

The definition of a bribe is the promise of money “in order to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust.” Unlike the previous cash payments he floated, Trump is describing this one like a quid pro quo in which voters — who are in a position of trust by virtue of their ability to elect his fellow Republicans — get $5,000 in exchange for putting those Republicans back in power.

That doesn’t make it criminal bribery, and defenders would likely say it’s akin to GOP candidates vowing to cut taxes if they win, over the opposition of their opponents. (A prosecutor in Wisconsin recently declined to bring bribery charges against Elon Musk after he offered $1 million prizes for people voting.)

But Trump’s latest gimmick certainly sounds like bribery, especially given Trump hasn’t outlined any policy goal that’s attached, like stimulating consumer spending.

It’s not subtle, and even some Trump allies and conservatives are calling it out.

Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale posted on X that while he wants the GOP to win in the midterms, he is “strongly against bread and circus bribes.” And Republican former Rep. Bob Good of Virginia called it “Trump’s $5K ‘dividend’ socialist vote-buying scheme.”

The president himself has decried the concept of vote-buying — accusing Democrats of attempting it even when there was no such explicit quid pro quo.

In 2016, he called it a “bribe” for Hillary Clinton’s campaign to float keeping Loretta Lynch on as attorney general — even as the Justice Department was investigating Clinton’s use of a private email server.

“I mean, the attorney general sitting there, saying, ‘You know, if I get Hillary off the hook, I’m going to have four more years or eight more years,’” Trump said. “‘But if she loses, I’m out of a job.’ It’s a bribe.”

In 2020, he decried former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg trying to help former felons vote by spending millions paying their court fines and fees.

“Are you allowed to go tell people that: ‘Go vote. I’m going to pay off your tab’?” Trump asked, before saying it amounted to buying votes.

And during the 2024 campaign, he accused then-President Joe Biden of trying to buy votes with infrastructure projects and student loan debt forgiveness.

“We have a corrupt president — very corrupt,” Trump said in June 2023 about Biden’s student loan plan. “But this was a way of trying to buy votes. That’s all it was.”

“I guess I don’t blame him,” Trump added in May 2024, “but it’s very unfair.”