There are campaign promises. There are generous promises. There are impossible promises. And then there is Donald Trump, who has decided to simplify several centuries of democratic theory with one round number: $5,000.
The President of the United States has promised that every adult citizen will receive a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” if Republicans retain control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm elections.
Subtlety, apparently, was not invited to Dallas.
Trump did not merely say that his economic policies would make such a dividend possible. Nor did he first present legislation, explain how it would be financed and then allow voters to judge its merits. The sequence offered was considerably easier to understand: if we win, you get paid.
It would be improper to describe this in legal terms as vote buying. For the moment, it remains a conditional campaign promise, and words matter — particularly when they concern accusations against a president. But it would be equally foolish to pretend not to notice the carrot when the price is written across it in very large numbers.
Because $5,000 multiplied by America’s adult population rapidly ceases to resemble an electoral gift and enters the territory of figures with twelve zeros. Initial estimates put the total cost at more than one trillion dollars.
And here enters that unpleasant character who has a habit of ruining political parties: the calculator.
A president cannot simply open a drawer in the Oval Office, count out the banknotes and put them in the post. Federal spending on such a scale would require legislation and congressional appropriations. Nor has it yet been clearly explained where such an enormous mountain of money would come from.
Vice President JD Vance suggested tariff revenue could be used and that higher-income Americans might perhaps be excluded. In other words, only hours after the announcement of $5,000 for “every adult”, the asterisks were already beginning to appear.
Nothing particularly unusual in politics.
What is unusual is the extraordinary nakedness of the mechanism.
For generations, candidates have promised roads, hospitals, lower taxes, better schools, security, jobs, prosperity and occasionally something approaching universal happiness. At least those promises had the modesty to travel through the machinery of public policy first.
We have now arrived at a considerably more efficient formula:
Vote first. Collect later.
Trump can argue that this is simply a way of returning to citizens part of the revenue collected by the state. His supporters can argue that a fiscal dividend legitimately belongs to the people who finance the country. Both arguments deserve consideration.
But in that case, the dividend should be defensible on its economic merits regardless of who wins an election.
When the benefit is explicitly conditional upon one particular party controlling both chambers of Congress, it ceases to be merely a fiscal debate. It also becomes a remarkably expensive piece of electoral marketing.
And expensive is the operative word.
There is also a small historical irony. For decades, the United States has spent considerable time explaining to the rest of the world the virtues of its institutions, the transparency of its elections and the maturity of its democracy. Now one of its presidents is offering citizens a $5,000 incentive tied to a partisan victory.
Perhaps it is democracy.
Perhaps it is fiscal populism.
Perhaps it is simply Donald Trump taking to its logical conclusion something he has always understood rather better than many professional politicians: everything has a price, and whenever possible it should be written in very large numbers.
One question remains.
Who pays the bill?
The $5,000 may carry Trump’s name in the announcement.
But if the cheques ever arrive, the money will not come from his pocket.
One way or another, it will come from the pockets of Americans themselves.
Which gives the whole operation an almost perfect elegance:
the voter may ultimately finance the money being used to seduce his vote.
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Sources consulted: Reuters, Associated Press y prensa estadounidense.