Desperate Trump Steps Up Attempts to Con American Voters One More Time

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An increasingly panicked Donald Trump is raiding federal coffers in a last-ditch effort to stave off a defeat for his party in the midterms that would result in congressional oversight and accountability instead of rubberstamping and acquiescence.

The president used a social media post on Friday night to announce his latest ploy to buy some votes ahead of the election. This one involves $100 payments to be sent to 20 million “wonderful” seniors.

Trump said the money will “help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts.”

To anybody familiar with the president’s track record of making stuff up, it should come as no surprise that his administration has not reduced these premiums.

In 2024, the standard monthly Part B premium was $174.70, and it is $202.90 this year. That is an increase of more than 16 percent over two years, and the bribe payment the president is offering will offset less than one-third of seniors’ annual total.

According to the Medicare Trustees Report, premiums are expected to go up another $6.60 in 2027.

Trump made clear that this $2 billion kickback is separate from the $500 his administration will pay about 1 million middle class Americans enrolled in the Affordable Care Act. Those particular bribes payments will not only come with a presidential letter so that the recipients know for whom to vote but also the stench of irony. That’s because it was Republicans who allowed the enhanced Obamacare subsidies — that were put in place under President Joe Biden and had kept costs for their health insurance down — to lapse.

In other words, the GOP first took away this assistance at a time when Americans were struggling to pay their bills and, now that they have exacerbated the affordability crisis, Trump is “graciously” giving part of it back to some people in order to convince (with an emphasis on “con”) them to keep Republicans, i.e., the ones who created this mess, in power.

Of course, the $2.5 billion combined price tag, otherwise known as 2.5 ballrooms, for these bribes programs pales in comparison to the president’s most audacious scheme: the promise to pay Americans $5,000 each if they just keep the GOP in control of Congress.

As you may recall, he initially wanted this payoff to “only” go to all adults, which would have already cost about $1.2 trillion.

On Friday night, however, he upped the ante and vowed that these “dividends” would go to all Americans, which would push the price tag for this boondoggle to more than $1.7 trillion.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of a soaring national debt that recently crossed $40 trillion, in part because Republicans showered the richest Americans with lavish tax breaks.

To be fair, these $5,000 bribes payments, whether we pretend that they will go to adults or all citizens, won’t add anything to the debt because they will never happen.

Trump has made a habit of vowing to send voters four-figure “dividends” — either from savings supposedly achieved by DOGE or from his tariffs, which are actually paid for by American consumers and make imported goods more expensive for them. However, nobody has ever seen a penny of that promised money, and this will be more of the same.

The only question is whether voters have finally figured out that Trump will say anything to win an election, e.g., that he will lower costs; that he will end the Ukraine war on day one (when all he did on that day was pardon those convicted of storming the Capitol on January 6); that he won’t get the US involved in any new foreign conflicts; and that he would usher in a “golden age.”

And those who are unsure about the veracity of these promises should ask the grifter-in-chief why he won’t just send out those checks right now and not after the midterms. Or how he will pay for them when the entire tariff revenue during Trump’s second term has so far amounted to only about $400 billion (and, to reiterate, most of this was paid by US consumers).

Finally, it should be noted that the president’s desperation also manifests itself in other ways — for example, in the form of the misappropriation of $20 million that was supposed to be spent on homeland security but that is being used for (illegal) pro-Trump campaign ads.

It remains to be seen whether any of this will work. Based on the president’s abysmal polling numbers, it may not this time around.

It probably isn’t helping Trump that he keeps telling voters that prices are down and that the economy has never been better — or that he focuses on vanity projects Americans don’t care about.

Case in point is that he immediately followed up the social media post promising the bribes payments with one gushing over his ballroom.