“'Trump dividend': Can promising voters a check help win an election?”, 9 October 2026 (Photo via Le Monde — the original report)
As it ran on the front
Today we are making a dividend, which in America is not a payment from a company's profits but a promise from a president. At the Republican midterm convention, on a Wednesday, Donald Trump pledged five thousand dollars to every adult citizen if the Republican Party keeps both chambers of Congress after the midterm elections on the third of November. The first instalment left the kitchen this month as ninety dollars, sent to nearly twenty-one million Americans out of the Medicare Improvement Fund, and Trump said Americans could "rest assured" the rest would follow. Nobody at the podium will give you a date, or a figure, for it.
Clive A dividend. I have been drafting my own in verse since the cheque arrived, and nothing I own rhymes with Medicare.
Gary Rhymes with nothing because it's a number, not a sonnet. I'll take the airing cupboard apart before the next instalment turns up.
You will need one party already holding the House and the Senate, a date fixed for the third of November regardless of anyone's plans, ninety dollars already spent this month, sent to nearly twenty-one million Americans, and a number that nobody in Washington has written down yet.
Rob A number nobody's written down. We've got one of those as well, it's called the rent, and nobody's written it down since the rota stopped meaning anything.
Keith Rent nobody's written down is a rent I can collect again. Call it an improvement fund, charge admission, gone by Thursday.
Take the ninety-dollar check by both ends and turn it over: underneath you will find the name of the fund it came from, the Medicare Improvement Fund, already spending out loud while the five-thousand-dollar instalment still has neither a date nor a number attached to it. You will be looking for the date on that second instalment. There is no date; the ninety dollars already sent is what you have instead of it.
Le Monde, the paper they read across the channel, had this on the ninth of October as "'Trump dividend': Can promising voters a check help win an election?" Its columnist Pascal Riché notes that Silvio Berlusconi and Emmanuel Macron also used financial incentives during their campaigns.
Gary Incentives is a word for a bribe with a receipt. I've had better off the landlord, and he still owes me for the door.
This serves nearly twenty-one million Americans their ninety dollars now. The other five thousand is billed to whoever is still counting after the third of November.
Rob Billed to whoever's counting. That's the house as well: nobody's counted the kitty in months, and I'm still the only one who's fed it, in lentils.
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“They hand out ninety bucks from a Medicare fund like it's Christmas and dangle the real five grand as a loyalty bonus you only collect if their guys win in November. That's not a dividend, that's a bribe on layaway, and the down payment is coming out of seniors' own program. Watch for the day the big check never arrives and nobody at that podium remembers promising it.”
“Look, this is just the administration returning money to hardworking Americans, a dividend for a strong economy, and the ninety dollars is simply the first installment of good news. There's no connection whatsoever to the timing of an election that happens to fall a few weeks later. Did I say timing? There's no schedule. Forget I said schedule.”
Donald Trump is promising $5,000 to every adult US citizen if both chambers remain Republican after the midterm elections on November 3. In his column, Le Monde's Pascal Riché recalls that Silvio Berlusconi and Emmanuel Macron also used financial incentives during their campaigns.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
