The Bait And The Bite

There were many notable moments at the just-concluded Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas this week.

Vice President JD Vance's speech demonstrated that the GOP bench for 2028 is deep, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and current Florida Governor Ronald DeSantis expected to join him for the nominating fight.

Robert Kennedy's speech showed that a former Democratic presidential candidate can enter the big tent of the GOP and serve honorably, just like another candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, did as Trump's Director of National Intelligence.

The kicker, of course, was President Trump's keynote on Wednesday, in which he floated the idea of a $5,000 check to every adult American. “If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000,” Trump told the crowd at the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump dividend.” He returned to it on Thursday night to close the convention.

The media went ballistic.

How could Trump offer a financial bribe to voters two months before the election? Where does America have the money when it is already nursing a $40 trillion debt load and the 10-year bond yield is going up and up, now close to 5%? The annual U.S. inflation rate stands at 3.4% for the 12 months ending in August 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. With affordability already a significant household concern, how could Trump be so outlandish as to offer a $5,000 check?

The same media outlets were far less exercised in June 2022, when the rate hit 9.1%, the largest 12-month increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) since November 1981.

Even before the convention, the media was abuzz about the strange timing of the event. Party conventions are typically held during presidential years, so holding one during the midterms to draw attention to the GOP's bid to take both the House and Senate was an innovative idea.

Furthermore, President Trump, already in his second and final term, was bold enough to make it all about his presidency. His assertion that people should vote as though he's on the ballot was extraordinary.

Conventional wisdom and many media outlets continue to insist that the GOP is in for a shellacking in November. They did the same four years ago, when the Biden administration was facing numerous headwinds. The Afghanistan pull-out in August 2021, rushed to beat a deadline Biden had originally set for the 20th anniversary of 9/11, turned out to be a disaster. Washington's failed efforts in December 2021 to deter Moscow gave way to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two months later, with disastrous consequences throughout Europe — consequences the region is still grappling with four and a half years on.

Back then, many media outlets predicted that Democrats would lose upwards of 40 seats in the House in November 2022. However, while the GOP took the House, the margin was razor thin, and the Senate remained in Democratic hands.

Since taking office a second time, President Trump has signed more than 270 executive orders across nearly every policy area. The big ones, of course, were immigration, health policy, presidential powers, and trade. There have been quite a few setbacks because activist judges have joined hands with liberals to block him. But there have also been numerous victories at the Supreme Court.

The media hates to report those victories. It continues to amplify Trump administration difficulties while suppressing good stories about Trump. Significantly more stories focus on what is happening in and around Washington, D.C., so readers are often confused about whether they're consuming news from national media outlets or from local TV stations. We've seen repeated stories about the National Guard's deployment in Washington, the Reflecting Pool, the White House ballroom, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Trump's new proposal to build a victory arch. When Palm Beach International Airport was renamed for President Trump in July, with its code switching to DJT a month later, the media erupted in frustration. None of this is unworthy of coverage. The question is why it crowds out the tariff numbers, the Court record, and the more than 270 executive orders that are actually changing how the country is governed.

The Dallas convention was an effort by the Trump team to remind supporters and even wavering independents of many of this administration's accomplishments. Trump's offer of a $5,000 dividend to every adult American citizen if the GOP holds the House and the Senate was a classic troll.

Trump has now stirred the pot enough to bring the media focus back to tariff policy. The U.S. Treasury collected $264 billion in gross customs duties in 2025 alone, more than three times the 2024 figure, and at the highest effective tariff rate since 1947. More than $100 billion of that has since been returned under court order, which shows two things. President Trump is willing to be aggressive in his policy prescriptions, but he complies when the courts stop him. Had the Supreme Court not ruled against him, America would have been on course to collect well over $300 billion in tariffs this year. Much of that coverage was hostile. It was also, for the first time in months, about tariffs rather than ballrooms.

As for the media, which began incessantly complaining that Trump's offer amounts to a bribe, we should remind reporters that American politicians have been offering policy sweeteners to their supporters for decades. President Biden offered to forgive student loan debt, a move the Supreme Court later struck down. Kamala Harris proposed funding for small business owners. President Obama used executive action on immigration, including the 2012 DACA program, in the hopes of winning Hispanic votes.

Americans know well that a bribe offered publicly to everyone, as in the Trump proposal, is not really a bribe. Besides, Trump's check would go to diehard TDS opponents too. The qualifications announced so far are minimal: be an adult U.S. citizen, and spend the money here.

We want the GOP to focus more on America's ballooning debt, too. But had President Trump suggested that in Dallas this week, there would've been a collective yawn. So Trump trolled, and the media took the bait.

Let us see what the next eight weeks bring.