President Donald Trump capped the first day of his Republican Party’s first-ever midterm convention by proposing to pay every US adult a $5,000 ‘Trump dividend’ if his party wins November’s congressional elections.
Trump delivered the extraordinary overture during a primetime speech that lasted nearly two hours and firmly placed him at the centre of the midterm campaign at a time when his sagging approval ratings could weigh on Republicans’ chances.
It was not immediately clear how the $5,000 payments would work or whether they would be legal.
The proposal would likely cost more than $1 trillion, with approximately 270 million US adults, and could require the approval of Congress.
The convention’s focus on Trump amounts to a risky bet that he can mobilise the voters who carried him to the presidency two years ago, despite opinion polls showing his popularity is at an all-time low.
But it remains to be seen whether his campaign-style speech will appeal to the critical swing voters who have drifted away from Trump’s party amid growing dissatisfaction with the cost of living and the war on Iran.
“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” Trump said.
“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” Trump said, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”
“We don’t want you to go to Canada to spend the money,” he said.
“We don’t want you to go to China, to Germany. You got to spend the money in the United States of America.”
One former Republican strategist and pollster said the promise should be firmly seen in the context of an election that is now less than two months away.
“It is an extraordinary promise, and I’m not sure where that money is going to come from – but it is campaign season,” Robert Moran said.
While Republican officials had described the convention as an opportunity to tout Trump’s policies, most speakers focused on attacking Democrats as extreme on topics such as transgender women in sports and border security.
Alabama state Representative Ernie Yarbrough, a convention attendee, said Trump needs to give voters a clearer sense of how long the war in Iran could last.
“People want to feel like we’re not getting stuck in an endless cycle,” he said.
Trump defended his decision to attack Iran, saying he acted to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.
He also promised that oil prices would drop ‘as soon as we win the war with Iran’, which he vowed would happen soon.
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