In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, Donald Trump seemed to realize that his party was poised to suffer significant losses. The first-term president, however, thought he could stem the tide with a new idea: He and congressional Republicans, Trump claimed, were working “around the clock” on a new, “very major” tax cut, which would exclusively benefit the middle class.

The package would be ready, he vowed, no later than Nov. 1 — five days before the midterms.

There was one rather dramatic flaw with Trump’s plan: It didn’t exist. He’d simply made it up. In fact, the whole story was utterly bizarre: Lawmakers weren’t on Capitol Hill, literally no one was working on the issue, and even White House officials were “mystified” by Trump’s absurd declarations.

But the president apparently assumed that voters would hear their president talk about putting money in their pockets, swoon reflexively and immediately reward GOP candidates with support. If that meant touting a plan that existed only in Trump’s imagination and lying brazenly to the nation, so be it.

Eight years later, in the run-up to the Republican’s second midterm elections, the incumbent president is again feeling desperate, well aware of the fact that his party is likely to suffer a new round of election losses, which has led him to once again float another ridiculous vow.

On the opening night of the Republican Party’s pointless and counterproductive midterm convention, Trump declared, “If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them … I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

After adding that Americans would be required to spend the money in U.S. (as if the government could somehow monitor how and where tens of millions of people were utilizing their own money), the president reiterated, “So if the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000. It will be called ‘the Trump dividend.’ Congratulations. Now all we have to do is win.”

As part of the same pitch, he said the $5,000 checks are possible because the United States is “making so much money.”

There’s no reason to be coy about the circumstances: This plan will never come to fruition. Trump is counting on fools to accept this nonsense at face value, but even his most knee-jerk followers need to realize that this con is literally unbelievable.

How do I know for sure? Several reasons, actually.

He’s tried to pull eerily similar stunts before: Over the course of his second term, Trump has floated dividend checks from the failed DOGE initiative, dividend checks from his failed tariff policy and rebate checks after Republicans let Affordable Care Act subsidies expire late last year. Those checks never materialized, however, because the president was lying.

The money to pay for such an idea doesn’t exist: Estimates vary, but sending $5,000 checks to every American adult would cost roughly $1.3 trillion. If Congress had $1.3 trillion lying around, waiting to be spent, we could at least have a conversation about how the money could be utilized, but since that money doesn’t exist, there’s no point.

Relatedly, Trump’s attempt to justify this nonsense by claiming that the United States is “making so much money” would be less laughable if he weren’t responsible for creating a $2 trillion annual budget deficit, which proves the opposite of his intended point.

The idea is, to put it mildly, legally dubious: The sitting American president told the American public that they will all get generous cash rewards, but only if Republicans win the midterms. One need not be an expert in criminal law to recognize the legal complications of such a pitch.

This would require congressional approval, which will not happen: As the first night of the midterm convention wrapped up, some GOP lawmakers were already making clear that they wouldn’t support this plan.

If Trump were serious about this, he wouldn’t have to wait: In the 2024 elections, voters elected a Republican Congress and a Republican White House. With this in mind, if Trump wanted to approve a plan to send 270 million people $5,000 checks, he could do so right now. The fact that this won’t happen tells the public everything it needs to know.

As the conversation surrounding this absurdity advances, there is a related question that the White House should at least try to answer: What exactly does the president intend to do with this $1.3 trillion if Republicans don’t fare well in this year’s elections?

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