Fox News’s Baier presses Vance on Trump’s $5K dividend promise

Fox News anchor Bret Baier pressed Vice President Vance on President Trump’s pledge to give Americans $5,000 if Republicans keep control of Congress come November, saying critics would respond to the roughly $1.3 trillion payout as “bribing voters.”

“I can hear the critics’ heads exploding,” Baier told Vance late Wednesday, hours after Trump made the vow on the first night of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas.

“They’re saying out loud, I guarantee you: ‘The president is bribing voters to vote for Republicans to take over the House, and then he’s bankrupting the country because the deficit and debt is huge and inflation would come back if this comes into play,’” the host added.

Vance defended the proposal, calling the payments a “dividend for American workers.”

“We’re taking an extraordinary amount of revenue,” he said, referring to the revenue generated by Trump’s tariffs , which he said Americans should receive a share of. The administration previously floated $2,000 tariff dividends .

“If you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you’re going to share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that we’re creating in the United States of America,” the vice president continued. “I don’t think it’s a controversial idea.”

Trump announced the proposal during his nearly two-hour speech , saying he would issue a $5,000 “dividend” to every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans maintain majorities in the House and Senate in November.

“Because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” the president told the crowd.

He also said the money would need to be spent domestically but did not provide details.

“We don’t want you going to Canada to spend the money,” Trump added. “We don’t want you going to China, to Germany.”

Congress would need to approve the payment, and with roughly 270 million adults in the U.S., sending each of them $5,000 would cost more than $1 trillion. U.S. tariff revenue would also fall short of covering the full cost of the payments as the president described them, according to The Associated Press.