The Memo: As Trump lavishes cash on voters, ethics experts raise alarm

President Trump is doing everything he can to win favor with a dissatisfied electorate before the midterms — including promising money.

Speaking in San Antonio on Wednesday evening, Trump repeated his pledge to send $5,000 to every adult American if the GOP retains its narrow majorities in the House and the Senate.

Skeptics roll their eyes at the proposal, noting that previous Trump promises about checks purportedly garnered from tariff revenue and Department of Government Efficiency savings failed to materialize.

Trump’s promise would also become moot if Democrats merely win a majority in the House. The consensus among political insiders in both parties is that they are highly likely to do so.

Nevertheless, voters can “count on it” that the checks would arrive if the GOP pulled off a double-victory, Trump promised the crowd in San Antonio.

Democrats don’t see the Trump tactic as either serious or effective.

“In some places it might matter, but in most places it won’t,” Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told this column. “In places where Republicans should do well, they’re being clobbered right now. It would take a lot of checks for people to change their minds.”

Sheinkopf also noted that Trump has been making the promise often since he first unveiled the idea at the GOP midterm convention in Dallas a month ago. Many opinion polls have grown bleaker for Republicans during that time.

“People know they are [supposedly] getting the checks, and it hasn’t moved their votes back into the Republican column,” Sheinkopf noted.

Still, the $5,000 check proposal is just one arrow in a quiver of giveaways Trump and the GOP are surely hoping will make voters more receptive to their candidates.

A plan is already in motion sending $90 payments to more than 20 million people enrolled in Medicare Part B. In a separate move, almost 1 million people are receiving $500 checks, purportedly because they were overcharged under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

There is a whole separate debate about the use of public money in a different way: to fund a series of Trump-centric TV ads. Amid public backlash, Trump on Monday promised future ads would be paid for by him or his main super PAC.

But the White House has ruled out reimbursements for money already spent on the ads — which The New York Times estimated as more than $11 million. The Democratic National Committee is suing over the matter.

Trump has vigorously defended the payments related to Medicare and the ACA.

Announcing the $90 Medicare-related payments in a social media post late last week, Trump wrote that the money was intended “to help pay for [recipients’] Medicare Part B premiums, which we have already reduced by significant amounts.”

He added that the money would come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which he derided as “a pointless ‘Slush Fund.’”

A separate fact sheet from the White House said the fund “has been given $2 billion by Congress for the purposes of making improvements to the Medicare fee-for-service program, but has never before been utilized.”

As for the $500 payments relating to the Affordable Care Act, mailed checks are to be accompanied by a letter from Trump.

A copy of the letter seen by The Hill stated: “For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov. That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now I am returning it to you!”

The White House has pushed back against questions about the ethics of these actions, or whether they amount to electioneering.

A spokesperson recently asserted to NPR that such lines of attack were “out-of-touch criticism.”

Some ethics experts emphasize that not all of Trump’s efforts are quite the same.

Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer during former President George W. Bush’s administration, asserted that the taxpayer-funded Trump-centric TV ads “definitely crossed the line. Those were illegal. Those were propaganda.”

But Painter also characterized the pledge of the $5,000 checks in the event of a GOP midterm victory as “a stupid promise” rather than an illegal one — even as he doubted that the president could get such a windfall authorized by Congress.

And he seemed even more relaxed about the Medicare and ACA-related payments.

“Big announcements right before Election Day are par for the course in politics,” he said. “Politicians love to tax you in April and spend your money in October and November.”

But others take a far more critical view.

“Within weeks of the election that could cost him Congress, based on recent polling, he is suggesting monies are available now to certain categories of U.S. persons,” said Virginia Canter, chief counsel for ethics and anti-corruption at the Democracy Defenders Fund.

Canter, who served as a White House associate counsel for former Presidents Clinton and Obama, added: “It basically suggests [the monies] are aimed at influencing the voting in favor of Republican candidates.”

Canter also claimed the payments appeared highly questionable legally, given the traditional power of Congress over spending.

“When Congress does enact legislation, it’s for specific purposes and any payments have to be for the purposes for which they’ve been appropriated,” she said. “It’s not in the hands of the president.”

Trump, predictably, seems unbothered by all that.

Reiterating his promise about the $5,000 checks in a video earlier this week, he boasted about his economic record.

“Our country is doing so well under Republican leadership that only I can make you this promise,” he insisted.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.