Dem
52
Ties
4
GOP
44
Election Day is a week away. As we have written many times already, and will write many times more in the next week, the polls are overall grim for the Republican Party. The economy is bad in some very politically damaging ways, a subject we will discuss in an item planned for tomorrow. The Epstein files may be bubbling up again (see above), and are always lurking right below the surface. The situation in Iran is bad, and is on the cusp of getting worse (at the moment, we awaken every morning expecting to see news that the Iranians have launched some sort of massive assault). All of this is to say it's desperation time for Trump and his party, and the signs of that are ubiquitous right now.
To start, members of this administration are looking feverishly for ways to get in good with the boss right now. They know next Tuesday is going to be a bad day, and that Donald Trump will be looking for scapegoats that he can scream at, blame, and possibly fire. One good way to kiss the presidential hindquarters right now is to come up with some sort of trickery that will enable his overall strategy of trying to buy people's votes. There have been at least a dozen such schemes of various sorts in the last month, starting with the $5,000 checks that were teased at the faux convention. In the last few days, three additional schemes joined the list.
First up is what would theoretically be the largest cash outlay. Yesterday, Trump got on his social media platform for fraudsters to make this announcement:
Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Sometimes we are interested in seeing what kind of comments a post like this generates. But we'd have to sign up for a Truth Social account, and that's not going to happen.
There is no information whatsoever as to where Trump is going to come up with this money, or under what authority he might award it. These days, he's not bothering with such niceties, since he has no intention of paying out anyhow. Obviously, this is just a backdoor way to put forth his claim that there is all kinds of voter fraud out there. Notice that, in the message, he doesn't even bother to tell people how to report fraud should they wish to do so. He knows full well that the website/tip line/whatever would promptly be flooded with hundreds of thousands of messages reporting the guy who, in 2020 (aka a "past election"), tried to conjure up 11,780 fake votes in Georgia.
Meanwhile, around the same time that Trump was making his pseudo-offer, J.D. Vance was given the privilege of bribing voters with a much smaller amount of money. Campaigning for the shouldn't-be-in-trouble-but-maybe-he-is Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), the VP announced that the Department of Agriculture would hand out $57 million in grants to ranchers for the purpose of hand wave, hand wave, hand wave. There were lots of big and impressive words about what the administration is calling the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program, but what it amounts to is that beef prices being paid by consumers went up due to the Iran War, and then to fix that Trump dropped protectionist tariffs on foreign beef. Beef producers have been hit hard by the increased fuel (and other) costs triggered by the Iran War, and then they were hit again by the competition from foreign concerns. So, this is a $57 million band-aid/bribe.
And finally, Trump was performing one of his rallies last week, in Greenville, NC. That city is close to Camp Lejeune, the subject of a lawsuit, and nine-figure compensation fund, for veterans who spent years drinking tainted water while serving at that base. During his show, Trump warned/threatened that if the Democrats win control of either chamber of Congress, those vets who have not received their settlements yet probably never will. The implication was that Democrats would refuse to approve the money, but the truth is that the money has already been allocated, so the only way it would not be paid out would be if the Trump administration refused to do so.
So, that's the latest flim-flammery. The bribes are getting smaller and/or more indirect. We interpret that as a sign that Trump's minions are running out of ideas, and have largely emptied the bag of tricks. (Z)