President Trump’s desperate campaign to buy off voters | Editorial
From cash payouts to Russian diesel, his eleventh-hour efforts to avoid a midterm rebuke seem doomed to fail.
The omens that Donald Trump is facing an epic example of what another Republican president once called “a thumpin’” are accumulating. His deeply unpopular Middle East war is metastasizing, contributing to persistently high prices and a historically low public opinion of his presidency. Republican schemes to rig the vote by gerrymandering and other means appear insufficient to withstand a Democratic wave, forcing them to abandon formerly favorable territory such as Georgia and North Carolina and fight for ruby-red turf in Kansas and South Carolina.
Enter Trump’s last crass resort: rank bribery. From cash payouts to compromising imports of high-priced resources, the president is making a last-ditch attempt to buy off voters and dodge a richly deserved reckoning.
Last week, for example, Trump announced that he would send a one-time $90 “rebate” to tens of millions of Medicare recipients. Billed as offsetting October premiums for the program’s Part B, which covers outpatient medical services, the $2 billion in payouts are raiding a fund meant to improve Medicare management and oversight. The money will cover not quite half the $202.90 premium, which has risen about 16% since Trump took office.
It’s not the administration’s only attempt to use money to paper over its record of making Americans sicker and healthcare costlier. Last month, the White House announced plans to send $500 to nearly a million Americans insured under the Affordable Care Act in 30 states, excluding Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and others that manage their own insurance marketplaces. Even for those getting the money, the payout will be dwarfed by annual premium increases in the thousands of dollars under the Republicans’ so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut social services to offset tax cuts favoring the wealthy.
Trump has also been reiterating his most preposterous promise to pay off voters, claiming during recent campaign stops that his administration will give every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate next month. Such a giveaway, first floated during the party’s midterm convention last month, would cost the government more than a trillion dollars. Given the scant likelihood of such a GOP victory, on the other hand, the president might as well promise us $5 million each.
The administration is also scrambling to temper mass discontent by dumping dubiously sourced foreign goods on the domestic market. In a desperate bid to tame punishing diesel prices, Trump shocked Ukrainians fighting for their freedom and lawmakers who voted to penalize Russian aggression by announcing a deal to let Vladimir Putin’s regime export millions of barrels of the fuel. U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who is in danger of losing his reelection bid in Bucks County, is among the Republicans joining Democrats to block the move, which could violate a federal ban on Russian energy imports while subsidizing Putin’s brutal invasion.
The gambit echoes Trump’s mystery meat gimmick easing foreign beef imports in an effort to bring down U.S. prices. The policy has angered ranchers and done little for consumers.
It’s not the only such Hail Mary that appears to be going nowhere. Despite the diesel deal, oil prices rose Monday after Saudi Arabia came under attack from Iran’s Houthi allies, underscoring the chaotic repercussions of Trump’s war. And polls have shown voters are divided over Trump’s crude promises of cash, which most don’t believe. When it comes to winning over voters, it seems promises of payoffs are no substitute for a record of success.
