US President Donald Trump has promised to pay every adult citizen in the US $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections. He said this at the party’s convention on Wednesday in the middle of a US presidential term and ahead of the midterms, expected to be held on 3 November. The proposal will cost over $1 trillion and has raised ethical concerns.
Mr Trump’s proposal aims to induce US citizens to vote for Republicans, with a direct financial reward conditioned on his party winning. His statement also made Republicans’ concerned about their prospects in the November elections obvious. “If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000,” he told the crowd of supporters present at the convention. “There is a crazy little sick cloud over our country.
We will defeat communism in America,” he went on. He also urged them to “pretend that I’m on the ballot” despite his growing unpopularity among Americans. The Guardian reported that many Republican candidates skipped the two-day convention because of Mr Trump’s deep unpopularity, driven by discontent over inflation and high consumer and gas prices. This has been linked to the trade war with China and Canada.
There are also concerns about the US war with Iran. Mr Trump also discussed the war in his lengthy speech, explaining that he needed to start the war because Iran was perhaps “two, maybe three weeks away from having a nuclear weapon,” a claim that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) already identified as untrue. The president also devoted much of his speech to fearmongering about the implications of losing to the Democrats.
“If we lose, you’re going to lose your border, you’re going to lose your tax cuts, you’re going to lose your safety and security, you’re going