09/17/26: Whoppers
9/14/2026We’re seven weeks from the midterm elections. Mail-in and absentee voting has already begun in some states. Voters are starting to pay more attention to the candidates and to the parties they represent. And President Trump insists it’s all about himself.
That may be substantially true. Both for his supporters and for his opponents. The President’s poll numbers, contrary to what he claims, have sunk to around 35 percent or so, lower at this point in a presidential term than for most past Presidents. So what is Trump doing to maintain his party’s control in Washington?
Some really strange stuff.
At the Republican Party’s unique midterm national convention last week, President Trump promised that if the GOP retains its majorities in Congress, the U.S. Treasury will give every adult American $5,000.
That’s frankly the most bizarre campaign pledge I can remember from my 85 years.
In the first place, on its face it appears patently illegal. Federal law for decades has forbidden offering to buy votes for money. The wording is worth printing in its entirety:
“18 U.S. Code Part I, ‘Crimes,’, Chapter 29, No. 597, ‘Expenditures to influence voting:’”
“—Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and
“—Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote—
“—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
It’s Alice in Wonderland time. This isn’t just a prediction that people will be better off if the Republican party retains control of Congress. The law says it’s illegal both to make a cash offer and to receive it. For the President, it would be a question of whether or not he is making the offer as an official act in the performance of his duties. If the Supreme Court somehow declares it to be an official act, then the court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States would insulate him from prosecution.
But the voters themselves would not be so fortunate. The law makes it a crime to accept compensation for a vote, not just to offer it. So a case could be made that any voter who accepted the $5,000 offer could be in violation of federal law.
Trump may have discussed the whole situation with his personal lawyers, or with the Department of Justice (he appears not to differentiate them). But maybe not – his officials are sometimes blindsided by what he says or does.
The law isn’t the only problem with the $5,000 handout, offer, temptation, or bribe, whatever you prefer to call it. The U.S. population has about 270 million adults. Do the math. A gift to that many people at $5,000 per head would cost the U.S. Treasury about $1 1/3 trillion. That’s about equal to what Trump demands from Congress for the entire Defense Department in the coming fiscal year, and only slightly less than annual federal expenditures for Social Security. It’s more than the $1 trillion the government pays annually in interest on the national debt.
This despite the fact the U.S. debt recently went over $40 trillion. Congressional Republicans have chronically wrung their hands over that kind of deficit spending – how could they possibly countenance adding another trillion-plus dollars through such a crass handout? And could Trump do it without congressional approval? These days no one knows.
The massive pay-for-votes scheme isn’t Trump’s only fringe statement. Last week he veered sharply from his previous forecasts that the Iran war would last only a short time, to predict instead that Iran will now keep the fighting going until after the American midterm elections.
That’s more than seven weeks from now. When he initially attacked Iran in late February with what he called “a short-term excursion,” he assured Americans that the war would last only a few weeks. It’s now been more than six months, and another seven weeks would extend the fighting to more than eight months.
It sounds as though Trump now doesn’t intend to try to win the war until after
November 3 at the earliest, nor does he intend seriously to negotiate before then.
The biblical admonition from I John 2:4 comes to mind: “The truth is not in him.” At some point, unreliable statements, promises, and pledges inevitably grow stale, disappointing more of his loyalists and motivating more of his opponents.
Polling for the midterm election indicates voters are ready for a change. To achieve their goal, they will need to overcome attempts to restrict mail-in voting, to redefine congressional district boundaries, and to surveil polling places. But regardless, it’s clear the 47th President has lost his mojo.
