President Donald Trump’s first-term stimulus checks were a response to a pandemic he didn’t cause. His second-term cash promises are mostly a response to problems his own policies created, and now stretch to an election he may lose because of them.
At the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday, Trump pledged $5,000 to every American if Republicans hold the House and Senate in November, calling it the “Trump Dividend” and comparing it to a company’s shareholder payout. The pledge would cost more than $1 trillion and is conditioned on an election result rather than an economic one.
