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What. The. Actual. Fuck?

Donald Trump said every adult citizen in the US will receive a dividend of $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections, while delivering a historically long convention speech in Dallas in which the president assailed Democrats as radical communists and defended his unpopular war in Iran.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000,” Trump told the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Wednesday, claiming the payment was possible “because of our tremendous strength and success economically”.

Trump made the pledge, almost immediately raised ethical concerns, during a nearly two-hour long speech in which he also urged voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot” – despite his historic unpopularity causing many vulnerable Republican politicians to avoid the event.

Speaking in Dallas, Trump claimed, without evidence, that his second term had been “the most successful two years, financially and every other way, in the history of the presidency”, but much of his speech also focused on fearmongering about what would happen should Democrats win the House or the Senate in November.

I will say I admire The Guardian for refusing to give him a title. They just work it in somewhere else, lowercase.

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[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

You're asking me to prove that no one has ever been prosecuted under this law for this.

No, that's now how case law works. You provide evidence that someone has been charged with this, and that the judge ruled in the defendant's favor. This is very simple.

You're misrepresenting my argument, straw manning it as "stimulus checks were legal."

This was your exact reasoning for why it should be legal. But sure, call it a strawman if you want.

All Trump is promising is, "if my party wins, we'll pass stimulus checks through an act of Congress or through an interpretation of existing spending allocations." That's literally all he's promising. It's no different than every presidential midterm campaign in history, except just how crass he is about it.

No, that's not how presidential midterms work. Presidents don't make promises based on what happens when congresspeople win. The congresspeople make promises on what they will do when elected.

A president's job is not impacted whatsoever by the results of a midterm. If he wants stimulus checks, he can try do it with Dems in office too. He's very clearly using it as a financial incentive to influence which candidates people vote for.

Can you provide a single example backing up your interpretation of the law?

Vote buying examples are a short search away. "If the Republicans win, I'll give everyone $5000" is the national scale version of it.

Laws outlaw things; they don't allow things.

??? They do both.

And this proves you're acting like Blue MAGA. When told you're being a campist, you reply, "but my camp is better!"

If being opposed to blatant fraud makes you label me as a "Blue MAGA" then that's quite the point of view. I don't remember stating my political bias once, and this controversy extends across the aisle.

But sure, since you're asking, I lean left, though I'd hardly call it "blue" with where the Dems are at.

this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2026
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