“Don’t let Obama buy the election by handing out unlimited free money to states,” Trump wrote on X on Oct. 30, 2012. The president posted that statement just one week before Barack Obama was elected for his second term in office.
Trump has long criticized Obama for a number of reasons, including accusing the latter of treason by attempting to rig the 2016 and 2020 elections. But Trump’s latest bid to swing voters in the midterm elections has some social media users scratching their heads.
One user replied to Trump’s post with a GIF of the president pointing with the caption “I DID THAT” on it. Another user said “I just have to laugh. The call is coming from inside the house,” while another simply wrote “well well well” under Trump’s post.
Trump’s $5,000 pledge
The president’s $5,000 pledge is contingent on the Republicans winning the midterm elections, which would allow the party to retain control of the House and Senate.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump told the crowd at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump dividend.”
Trump also claimed the checks are the result of the country’s economic success, claiming America is making so much money while comparing the move to when successful companies distribute cash to shareholders. The president, however, did not make it clear how the government planned to pay for these checks.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 245 million adult citizens in the U.S. Giving each of them $5,000 would cost about $1.2 trillion, PBS News reports.
Speaking to Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said some of the money for these checks would come from revenue earned from Trump’s tariffs. According to the Tax Foundation, Trump’s tariffs generated an estimated $158 billion in 2025 and are projected to make $207.5 billion this year — significantly less than the $1.2 trillion price tag of these proposed dividend checks.
“This ‘dividend’ would spend, on a one-time payment, almost all the revenue that the new tariffs are projected to bring in over a decade,” Erica York, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, wrote in a post on X.
