Trump: If Midterms Go Our Way, I'll Give Every US Adult $5K

President Trump wants Republican voters to picture his name on their November ballots, even though it won't be there. Speaking in Dallas at the start of a two-day RNC midterm convention, the president urged GOP voters to treat the elections as a direct referendum on him, the Wall Street Journal reports. "I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot," he said. "Just one more time, because 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 to lose your wealth."

Trump is pushing to keep both the House and Senate in GOP hands for the last two years of his term, and he has sounded the "pretend I'm on the ballot" theme on the campaign trail in recent weeks. That strategy comes despite his approval rating hovering in the low-to-mid 30s and warnings from some Republicans that tying the midterms so tightly to him could backfire. The concern: Candidates already strained by high gas prices, the ongoing Iran war, and affordability worries may struggle if voter frustration spills over onto the party brand. Trump, for his part, has insisted that voters are angry at Republicans generally, but not at him personally. More notable lines from his speech:

• "If the Republicans win the Senate and House, because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. It will be called the Trump Dividend," he said. The AP calls the plan, which would cost more than $1 trillion and would require congressional approval, "dubious" and said Trump offered no details of how it would work. Trump also said the money would need to be spent in the US, but similarly offered no details of how that would be enforced.
• Trump also painted Democrats as extremists, the AP reports. "If we hand America's future to the radical-left Democrats, our nation will spend the next decade just getting back on its feet," he said. "Vote Republican and we will leave the world in our dust for generations to come."
• On the subject of the Iran war, he appeared to acknowledge it has hurt the economy, noting that before the US attacked, he told economists, "I hate to do this to you." He claimed Iran was "two, maybe three weeks away from having a nuclear weapon" before the attack.