Trump Administration

Some Bribes, as a Treat

Plus: Data center backlash, Anthropic job-loss predictions, and more...

Liz Wolfe | 9.10.2026 9:30 AM

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(Laura Brett/Sipa USA/Newscom)

The classic strategy: Any parent knows bribery is the path to compliance. And President Donald Trump appears to be applying this concept to the voting public.

"Because we've done so well, and because our country is making so much money, that—only I can make this promise to you, and here is my promise—if the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success…I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000," he said at the Republican National Committee's midterm convention last night. This would cost more than $1 trillion.

The asterisk is that this money would need to be spent in the United States, according to the president. (It's not clear how this would be enforced.)

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On principle, this type of bribery is wrong: Politicians should be pitching policy that can improve our lives (ideally by getting government out of the way wherever necessary, and limiting it to its most essential functions), not promising handouts. (Democrats have, of course, been playing the promising-handouts game for a long time, especially since the Bernie........

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