Can Trump Buy Back Americans’ Love at $5,000 a Piece? Guess We’ll Find Out.

Politics Donald Trump’s Strategy for November: Cheap Tricks and $5,000 Checks Republicans’ midterm convention was just a Trump rally with fancy signage. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. The first Republican midterm convention had all the simulacra of a real political convention. There were seats assigned by state and indicated by tall signs on poles, there was a host of precisely timed and deeply forgettable speeches by elected officials, and, of course, there was a keynote speaker. But those were all window dressing to hide what it really was: just another Trump rally. There was news—or at least an eye-popping statement designed to make headlines: Donald Trump promised that, so long as Republicans retained control of both the House and Senate, every American would receive a $5,000 check from the U.S. government. It was a statement perfectly calibrated the next day in newspapers and local news broadcasts. That does not, however, mean it’s likely to happen. Republicans are a long shot to keep the House and far from a lock to hold on to the Senate. There are obvious policy issues with this, as it would cost over a trillion dollars. There are obvious political issues with it: Trump has had issues trying to rally fiscally conservative Republicans behind far less ambitious agenda items. It also was perfectly hedged as a proposal, conditioned only on the scenario that the GOP manages to defy political gravity in November. Still, it’s something new, at a time when Trump’s “Lake America”–style gimmicks have gone stale—a replacement to standard promises from Trump’s first term about building a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, ending foreign wars, and having so much winning that “your head will spin.” For those more likely to hear about politics from eight-second TikTok clips than 800-word news articles, Trump made masturbation jokes. The speakers preceding him were disjointed and all making their own pitches for why Democrats were bad and Republicans were good. Some touted the merits of last year’s Republican spending bill, now on its third or fourth name ahead of the midterms. Others focused on the evils of Democrats with the remarks of far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who has become a surrogate for a number of Democratic candidates, receiving particular attention. Some were candidates themselves, delivering versions of their own stump speech, just like the array of speakers who proceed Trump at every rally as a way to tide over the restless crowd before the main event. (The most noteworthy speaker before Trump was a recorded video from John Fetterman, who introduced his Republican colleague Dave McCormick. The iconoclastic Pennsylvanian did not back Trump in remarks that seemed designed more to influence Sunday-show bookers than Keystone State swing voters.) And just as there are occasional celebrity cameos at a Trump rally, there was one at the midterm convention, where early-aughts comic Adam Carolla did a routine. When Trump finally took the stage, he spoke for nearly two hours, just like a rally. In the front of the crowd were many of the usual Trump superfans who flock to every rally in the same way that fans of the Grateful Dead used to follow the rock group across the country. The president even shouted them out as he spoke—“the Front-Row Joes” and, of course, “Brick Suit,” a MAGA devotee who wears a suit with a brick pattern on it to show his ardent support for building a border wall with Mexico. The speech itself often felt like a rally speech. It was filled with digressions (Trump took shots at targets ranging from a New York Times writer to Michael Dukakis), and often the president spent an extended stretch as a fainthearted surrogate, urging voters to support Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton, despite the fact that Paxton dresses badly. But, of course, a mega Trump rally is what the GOP needs right now. Part of the modern role of political conventions is to fix the fractures that emerge within a political party during a presidential primary and signify that everyone is united in a common task. In Trump’s GOP, that’s not an issue. While a handful of moderate dissidents are tacitly tolerated as a matter of expedience, most other heretics have been driven from the tent. The party is united around Trump; the challenge is whether a significant portion of Republicans will vote for anyone besides Trump. The traditional utility of Trump rallies in competitive elections is to energize the MAGA base. At a time when Republican enthusiasm is lagging, that’s what this was about. As Trump told viewers that his wish was for voters to pretend that his name was on the ballot, this was about trying to energize his diehard loyalists—the people who were ready to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 but didn’t bother to show up in the voting booth in 2022—to turn out in November. Trump rallies have long been effective at this in specific races—Trump’s recent appearance in Myrtle Beach before a primary election in South Carolina may have been enough to steer that race to his preferred candidate—but this was just one big nationalized Trump rally. It might help some, but for anyone hoping it’ll swing the midterms, it probably wouldn’t be prudent to bet an entire $5,000 check. Donald Trump Elections Republicans 2026 Midterms