Your check for $5,000 is not in the mail

President Trump is not the first to dangle a tempting reward before people to get them to vote.

In the early 1990s, the California Democratic Party made a deal with Krispy Kreme: a free dozen donuts for anyone who walked in wearing an “I Voted” sticker. You voted, you qualified for a dozen donuts — no questions asked. I know all about it, because at that time I was chair of the state Democratic Party.

But that’s a far cry from what Trump has proposed. Unlike Trump, we didn’t offer free donuts only to those who voted Democrat, or only if Democrats won the election. And there was no cash involved.

What Trump proposed on the first night of last week’s midterm convention in Dallas is close to a pure bribe. It was like Oprah Winfrey, telling everyone in the audience to look under their seat for keys to a new Pontiac G6 — except Oprah delivered. There is no guarantee that Trump would.

“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,” Trump promised his audience of MAGA Republicans in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.” But of course, like everything else Trump does, it comes with strings attached: “We don’t want you going to Canada to spend the money,” he said .

While Trump’s proposal may technically be legal — amounting to nothing more than another questionable campaign pledge, like promising to end the war in Ukraine on day one — it has several other problems, starting with the fact that, under the Constitution, a president cannot send money to Americans without approval by Congress. And that could prove difficult, even if Republicans do, as unlikely as it may seem, maintain control of both the House and Senate.

There are roughly 245 million adult American citizens. According to the Associated Press, giving each of them a check for $5,000 would cost the treasury $1.3 trillion — which would make it the second most expensive of all government programs. Topped only by Social Security ($1.6 trillion) , but greater than Medicare ($996.7 billion), health care ($978.9 billion), interest on the national debt ($970.4 billion), and national defense ($916.6 billion).

That might prove to be a hard pill to swallow, even for loyal Trumpers. Especially after the national debt recently exploded to a gigantic $40 trillion. Which is why Trump’s $5,000 proposal received such a tepid response from prominent Republicans.

“Tying government checks to the outcome of an election starts to sound like pay-to-play politics,” sniffed Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.).

It will only lead to “more debt and more inflation,” predicted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

“I would personally throw everything of my heart and soul to stop it,” pledged Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), “because it would actually do more damage to working people than would ever help them.”

Frequent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on X he was “insulted by the notion that my vote this November could be bought for $5K.”

When asked whether Senate Republicans would approve Trump’s “dividend,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) would only say : “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

But the biggest problem with Trump’s $5,000 promise is that it’s hard to take seriously. Many Americans just won’t believe him. Because he’s tried this same trick before. In early 2025, after Elon Musk announced he was going to save taxpayers $2 trillion in cuts to the federal government, he and Trump promised to send dividend checks of $5,000 to every American household. DOGE didn’t save $2 trillion, and no checks ever went out.

On Nov. 9, 2025, after launching his global tariffs, President Trump promised to “issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower income people of about $2,000.” But Trump’s tariffs, severely curtailed by the Supreme Court, have only yielded $341 billion in income and, so far, no checks have been mailed.

Before leaving Ireland on Sunday, Trump insisted that, despite these problems, his $5,000 dividend checks were a sure bet. “ One hundred percent! “

A wiser voice would say: Don’t count on it. You never got the DOGE check or the tariffs check. You’re not going to get this Republican victory check, either. It’s just one more broken Donald Trump promise.

You’d be better off going to California to vote. At least, you’d walk away with a dozen donuts.