Trump’s $5,000 checks: A familiar idea, but with a more bribe-y feel

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.

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.

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.”

周三晚，在共和党中期选举大会上，唐纳德·特朗普总统出人意料地提出向美国民众直接发放数千美元的现金补贴。这并非他第一次这样做。

十个月前，特朗普还在兜售2000美元的关税分红支票。他宣称美国人“将会收到”这笔钱，任何反对他关税政策的人都是“傻瓜”。

结果证明，那些指望那笔钱的人才是真正的傻瓜。因为钱根本没到账。

事实上，特朗普周三承诺，如果共和党人保住国会多数席位，将向每位成年美国公民发放 5000 美元，这只是他一系列可疑的现金支付承诺中的一个例子。

虽然这件事不太可能真的发生，但它在另一个方面却很突出：即使在政客们越来越直接地向选民的钱包示好的政治环境中，特朗普的措辞听起来也很像政治贿赂——正如他以前也承认的那样。

这至少是特朗普在过去19个月里第四次提出要给美国人发现金。

2025年初，他提议用他领导的政府效率部（DOGE）节省下来的资金，向美国民众发放退税。他把这项提议称为“5000美元的DOGE分红支票！”

除了狗狗币（DOGE）之外，政府严重夸大了狗狗币的节省金额，实际上狗狗币并没有节省那么多钱。而且，狗狗币的退款也从未到账。

随后又出现了2000美元的关税分红承诺。和狗狗币分红一样，这项承诺也是基于特朗普夸大其词的说法，即他能让联邦政府突然间财源滚滚。

但这次与其说是一个想法，不如说是一个铁一般的承诺（“一定会付清”）。而特朗普违背了他的承诺。

到了下个月，也就是12月，特朗普又开始炒作这件事了。他提出给奥巴马医改的受益者1000到1500美元，而不是续签他们即将到期的医疗补贴。

最终，人们两样都没得到。

现在，特朗普加大了力度。他不仅在党代会上承诺捐赠5000美元，还在周四宣布，政府计划向多达100万声称奥巴马医改保险费用过高的人发放500美元的退款支票。此外，最近几天，政府还提出了一项方案，即每年向全职父母支付9000美元。

特朗普在其第一任期内确实成功地向部分家庭发放了直接补贴，金额高达数千美元：即新冠疫情纾困支票。尽管这些支票上署有特朗普的名字，但这实际上是国会两党共同努力的结果，旨在为这个前所未有的时期提供经济援助。

几乎没有理由相信这数千美元真的会到位。仅5000美元的支票一项就将耗资超过1万亿美元。2026财年联邦政府的全部可自由支配预算为1.6万亿美元，因此，这笔支出将使这部分预算大幅膨胀——而此时，国家债务已经达到40万亿美元。这肯定需要国会批准，而这似乎不太可能。此外，它还可能导致通货膨胀飙升。

但真正目的可能并非是让人们口袋里装满现金，而是营造出特朗普正在这样做的假象。

贿赂的定义是“为了影响身居要职者的判断或行为而承诺给予金钱”。与他之前提出的现金支付不同，特朗普将这次的贿赂描述为一种交换条件，即选民——他们因为能够选举他的共和党同僚而处于受信任的地位——将获得5000美元，以换取他们让这些共和党人重新掌权。

但这并不构成刑事贿赂，辩护者可能会说，这类似于共和党候选人承诺如果当选就减税，而他们的对手对此表示反对。（威斯康星州的一名检察官最近拒绝就埃隆·马斯克提出的贿赂指控提起诉讼，此前马斯克曾悬赏100万美元鼓励人们投票。）

但特朗普最新的伎俩听起来确实像是贿赂，尤其是考虑到特朗普没有提出任何与之相关的政策目标，例如刺激消费支出。

这毫不隐晦，甚至一些特朗普的盟友和保守派人士都对此表示谴责。

Palantir联合创始人乔·朗斯代尔在X网站上发帖称，虽然他希望共和党在中期选举中获胜，但他“强烈反对这种花言巧语式的贿赂”。弗吉尼亚州共和党前众议员鲍勃·古德称之为“特朗普的5000美元‘红利’社会主义式买票计划”。

总统本人曾谴责买票的概念——指责民主党人试图买票，即使没有明确的交换条件。

2016 年，他称希拉里·克林顿竞选团队为了留住洛雷塔·林奇担任司法部长而提出的“贿赂”——即便当时司法部正在调查克林顿使用私人电子邮件服务器一事。

“我的意思是，司法部长坐在那里说，‘你知道，如果我能让希拉里脱罪，我就能再干四年或八年，’”特朗普说。“‘但如果她输了，我就丢了饭碗。’这简直就是贿赂。”

2020 年，他谴责前纽约市市长迈克尔·布隆伯格试图通过花费数百万美元支付前重罪犯的法院罚款和费用来帮助他们投票。

“你可以去告诉人们：‘去投票吧，我会替你付清账单’吗？”特朗普问道，随后又表示这相当于买票。

在 2024 年的竞选活动中，他指责当时的总统乔·拜登试图通过基础设施项目和学生贷款债务减免来收买选票。

“我们有个腐败的总统——非常腐败，”特朗普在2023年6月谈到拜登的学生贷款计划时说。“但这不过是想收买选票。仅此而已。”

“我想我并不责怪他，”特朗普在2024年5月补充道，“但这非常不公平。”