President Donald Trump has bizarrely offered Americans thousands of dollars in direct payments at the Republican midterm convention - it isn't the first time.Ten months ago, Trump was peddling tariff dividend checks of US$2000 (NZ$3450). He declared that Americans "will be paid" the money and that anyone against his tariffs were "fools".Turns out, anyone actually counting on that money were the real fools, because it never arrived.Indeed, Trump's latest promise of US$5000 (NZ$8630) to every adult US citizen if Republicans keep their congressional majorities is just one example in a long line of dubious promises on cash payouts.While this one is no more likely to actually materialise, it stands out in another way - even in a political environment where politicians have increasingly made more direct overtures to their voters' wallets, Trump's phrasing makes it sound a lot like a political bribe, as even he would formerly admit.Trump has repeatedly floated giving people money - and failedThis is at least the fourth time in the last 19 months that Trump has floated giving Americans cash.In early 2025, he proposed giving Americans rebates funded by the money supposedly saved by his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). He labelled the proposal "$5000 DOGE DIVIDEND CHECKS!"Except DOGE, whose savings the administration grossly overstated, didn't save anywhere near that amount of money. The rebates never came.Then came the $2000 tariff dividend promise. Like the DOGE dividends, they were premised on Trump's overstated claims about him making the federal government suddenly newly flush with cash.This one was more of an ironclad pledge - "will be paid" - rather than just an idea and Trump broke his promise.By the next month, December, Trump was back at it. He floated giving Obamacare recipients $1000-1500 rather than renewing their expiring healthcare subsidies.In the end, people got neither.Now, Trump is doubling down. Not only did he make the $5000 pledge at the convention, but he announced that the administration was planning to send $500 rebate checks to up to 1 million people who claim they were overcharged for their Obamacare coverage. In recent days, the administration floated effectively paying stay-at-home parents US$9000 (NZ$15,530) per year.Trump did successfully send some direct payments to households during his first term, which amounted to thousands of dollars for some - the Covid pandemic stimulus checks - but despite Trump putting his name on those checks, it was a bipartisan effort passed through Congress and was aimed at providing financial relief during an unprecedented time.Why this promise feels so bribe-yThere is little reason to believe the thousands of dollars will actually materialise. The $5000 checks alone would cost more than US$1 trillion (NZ$1.7t). The entire discretionary budget for the federal government in the 2026 fiscal year is US$1.6 trillion (NZ$2.76t), so this would explode that portion of the budget - right after the national debt hit US$40 trillion (NZ$69t).It would surely require Congress's sign-off, which seems very unlikely. It would also risk spiking inflation.Putting cash in people's pockets probably isn't really the goal - it's the illusion of Trump doing so.The definition of a bribe is the promise of money "in order to influence the judgement or conduct of a person in a position of trust".Unlike the previous cash payments he floated, Trump is describing this one like a quid pro quo, in which voters - who are in a position of trust by virtue of their ability to elect his fellow Republicans - get $5000 in exchange for putting those Republicans back in power.That doesn't make it criminal bribery and defenders would likely say it's akin to GOP candidates vowing to cut taxes if they win, over the opposition of their opponents. A prosecutor in Wisconsin recently declined to bring bribery charges against Elon Musk, after he offered $1 million prizes for people voting.Trump's latest gimmick certainly sounds like bribery, especially given Trump hasn't outlined any policy goal that's attached, like stimulating consumer spending.It's not subtle, and even some Trump allies and conservatives are calling it out.Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale posted on X that, while he wants the GOP to win in the midterms, he is "strongly against bread and circus bribes". Republican former representative Bob Good of Virginia called it "Trump's $5K 'dividend' socialist vote-buying scheme".Trump's previous accusations of briberyThe president himself has decried the concept of vote-buying, accusing Democrats of attempting it, even when there was no such explicit quid pro quo.In 2016, he called it a "bribe" for Hillary Clinton's campaign to float keeping Loretta Lynch on as attorney general - even as the Justice Department was investigating Clinton's use of a private email server."I mean, the attorney general sitting there, saying, 'You know, if I get Hillary off the hook, I'm going to have four more years or eight more years, but if she loses, I'm out of a job'," Trump said. "It's a bribe."In 2020, he decried former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg trying to help former felons vote by spending millions paying their court fines and fees."Are you allowed to go tell people that: 'Go vote. I'm going to pay off your tab'?" Trump asked, before saying it amounted to buying votes.During the 2024 campaign, he accused then-President Joe Biden of trying to buy votes with infrastructure projects and student loan debt forgiveness."We have a corrupt president - very corrupt - but this was a way of trying to buy votes," Trump said in June 2023, about Biden's student loan plan. "That's all it was.""I guess I don't blame him," Trump added in May 2024, "but it's very unfair."- CNN