Donald Trump

Trump's $5,000 'Dividends' Are a Brazen Vote-Buying Scheme

Tariffs won’t begin to fund the effort to purchase voters’ good will.

J.D. Tuccille | 9.16.2026 7:00 AM

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(IMAGO/Dan Clohessy/IMAGO/Inpho Photography/Newscom)

Behind the battles over ideas and policy proposals, at its core, democratic politics is about buying votes. Sometimes, vote-buying is overtly a cash for ballots arrangement. But in the United States, votes have more often been purchased with the promise of "free" goods and services, paid for through taxes or, increasingly, by running up debt, and justified by empty verbiage about the public good that the scheme will allegedly promote. That makes President Donald Trump's promise of $5,000 "dividend" payments to Americans if his party wins the midterms a jarring return to the open corruption of the politics of the past—or of other country's present experiences.

You are reading The Rattler from J.D. Tuccille and Reason. Get more of J.D.'s commentary on government overreach and threats to everyday liberty.

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Dividends for Everybody, If Republicans Win

"If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate—both of them—because of our tremendous economic success….I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders," President Trump told attendees at the Republican midterm convention last week. "The reason the Democrats can't do that is because they don't do tariffs," he added.

Democrats may not do tariffs—at least not to........

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