DALLAS – The 2026 midterms are going so well for the Republican Party that halfway through their so-called “Trump-a-palooza” in Dallas, Texas, the president of the United States resorted to bribery.
“Here is my promise: 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,” Donald Trump triumphantly announced at the American Airlines Center during the first night of the highly unusual midterm convention that the president has forced a largely reluctant GOP to put on Wednesday and Thursday.
That pledge came after Trump claimed, “This has been the most successful two years financially and every other way in the history of the presidency,” and just minutes after he awkwardly dismissed Americans’ financial pain as a result of his illegal Iran war for the umpteenth time: “It happens to me all the time – guys come up, ‘You know, I wish you didn’t do the war in Iran. Gasoline’s up’ – ba, ba, ba.”
Even though his advisers and aligned lawmakers on Capitol Hill will never publicly concede this, Trump made clear Wednesday why so many Republican candidates and officials absolutely did not want to be at his big, beautiful, Trump-adulation party: He is a giant, self-centered reminder to the electorate of everything they hate about his presidency and policies. And Trump is not only refusing to give vulnerable Republicans space to create some mild distance from his flailing agenda; he’s making the party envelope itself around him, to the point that he declared in Dallas: “Pretend that I’m on the ballot!”
Ever since Trump was sworn back into the White House in January 2025, he has repeatedly promised Americans that he’d send them some sort of new check in the mail. It hasn’t happened, and this latest vow – which comes as Americans fend with higher gas prices and rising inflation – almost certainly will never happen, even if Republicans manage to hold the House and Senate.