Republicans have spent months calling nearly everyone with a big D next to their name a socialist. And it’s not just the new crop that includes Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, and James Talarico. It’s been a reliable attack since proud Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders took a run at White House over a decade ago.
The “red scare” has been a conservative chestnut for decades, and this election cycle is now different. The GOP even built a midterm convention around the charge, and its first night made the socialist threat front and center.
Then President Donald Trump singlehandedly undermined that talking point by offering his own redistribution of wealth plan by promising every adult in America five thousand dollars if the Republicans kept the House and Senate.
The irony is that Trump’s voting “bribe” came after he’d warned the crowd about the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas who wants to dismantle capitalism, called his opponents radical left communists, and asked whether anyone had ever seen a happy one. Earlier, Democrat apostate Senator John Fetterman appeared by video to reject socialism and the anti-American way of life.
But just 90 minutes into his speech, Trump undermined all the socialist fear-mongering talking points by announcing the Trump Dividend, five thousand dollars to every adult citizen if Republicans hold Congress. That’s two hundred forty-five million adults getting five thousand apiece, which adds up to $1.25 TRILLION, or more than all three rounds of pandemic stimulus checks combined.
This massively costly vote-buying is coming from the party that has made irresponsible and unfair wealth redistribution the central charge against its opponents for most of a year. And is proposing the largest one-time direct payment in American history from the stage of its own midterm convention? It’s either jaw-droppingly mind-numbing, or mind-numbingly jaw-dropping. You choose.
The reaction from the right was cognitive dissonantastic from individuals caught between the old-school financial responsibility conservative DNA and the need to pass the fading but still powerful Trump loyalty test.
Bret Baier reported his sudden raised eyebrows after doing the math from the Fox News set at the Dallas arena. JD Vance told the AP that the wealthy probably wouldn’t get the dividend, and claimed “tariff revenue” could cover the cost. That sounds great but also describes a cash payment to individuals financed by a tax on imports, paid for by the very same individuals.
After Trump’s speech, Senator Ted Cruz appeared on Hannity and defended the $5k bribe by claiming Democrats love to offer free money, which seems a clear admission that “if you can’t beat em, join em!” Only the “em” here is the very socialists that he and his party have been railing against for years. Cruz then said that, since most recipients work and pay taxes, this is really just a tax rebate (that one only receives if we all vote Republican?). Sean Hannity agreed that everybody understands that. Come on, people.
Is this just a clever tariff-funded way to rebate taxes, or is it straight-up socialism? That’s a semantic fight I’m leaving for others to debate. Republicans have built their campaigns on the fear-mongering charge that Democrats are going to just hand people money. Then during a prime-time midterm convention, their own president and party leader just proposed handing people more of it than anyone ever has before.
Trump and his minions can call this dividend, rebate, cash back … whatever they want. But the people who’d cash the check for voting Republican should note that this is the very same thing the GOP has been warning against for years. And Trump is either betting they don’t care, or too dumb to see socialism when it's promised to them from the Republican convention stage.
Not surprising in the least. He is the greatest accelerationist of all time with the goal of bringing us down to our knees as a country so that we bow down to the tech overlords.
Wrong. The money would come from tariffs.
That’s CAPITALISM not Socialism no matter how hard you try to spin it. Payback for decades of Americans getting screwed out of their hard earned money by other countries. We subsidized other countries with our taxes and purchases. They tariffed American exports and took advantage of our market. A rebate sounds fair as long as it’s really paid for and not just rolled into the national debt.