Pressure Campaign
The president is saying he'll only deliver aid to struggling Americans if they vote the way he wants next month
Donald Trump is a transactional man. If you scratch his back, he’ll scratch yours. This worldview may be understandable for a businessman, which Trump was for many years. It is less understandable for someone who is, ostensibly, a public servant.
On the campaign trail recently, Trump has been offering voters a bargain. If they vote for Republicans, he’ll do his job. If they don’t — well, the American people just might be on their own.
The most explicit example of this is the president’s proposed “Trump dividends” program, which boils down to a straight cash gift of $5,000 to every American adult. Trump has been floating this idea, which would cost more than $1 trillion, since the GOP’s emergency midterm convention in a naked attempt to curry favor with reluctant voters. In recent days, however, he’s started applying the same quid pro quo concept to individual states, making open extortion schemes a regular part of his stump speeches.
Two days ago, for instance, at a rally in Kansas to try to buoy the campaign of Republican Senator Roger Marshall, Trump made this bargain explicit.
“With Roger Marshall in the Senate, we will make year-round E-15 permanent,” Trump said. “But if Adam Hamilton is in, I’m not doing it. That’s it. I’m only doing it for him. That’s a big deal for Kansas.”
The program Trump is talking about, E-15, refers to the sale of gasoline diluted with ethanol, a corn-based alcohol that is a major product of Kansas’ corn industry, which is vital to the state’s overall economic health. Usually, the sale of E-15 fuel is regulated by the government for environmental concerns, but the Trump administration has recently eased those regulations in order to bring down gas prices and give struggling corn farmers a boost. In essence, the deal offered here is simple: Trump created a federal program that made some Kansans’ lives easier. Unless they vote for his preferred candidate in the upcoming election, he’ll make it all go away.
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This would be shocking if it were a one-time occurrence in a battleground state. Kansas is an unexpectedly close race, with Marshall, the Republican incumbent, facing an extremely stiff challenge from the Reverend Adam Hamilton, a Democrat. Hamilton is ahead in some polls, around 47 percent to 45, and the two candidates are set to debate Wednesday night for the last time ahead of the election. Kansas’ economic future, then, is certainly on the line.
But Kansas isn’t the only state where Trump is pulling this kind of open political extortion. A day later, on Tuesday night, he traveled to North Carolina, where families who live around the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base have, for decades, been trying to get settlements from the U.S. government after being poisoned by toxic chemicals in their water between 1953 and 1987. There are still thousands of victims who are waiting for payouts from the federal government, with their cases tied up in Department of Justice red tape. Enter Trump’s bargain: if his party wins, those cases get swift resolutions. If his party doesn’t, well, it simply won’t be a priority.
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Trump on Camp Lejeune water contamination claims: "If we win the House and Senate, I am directing the Department of Justice to settle all remaining legitimate claims as soon as possible … if we don't win, there's no money." pic.twitter.com/tcSEivg0PJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 21, 2026
In North Carolina, however, this is an almost impossible ask. Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper looks to be beating the pants off former RNC Chair Michael Watley, holding a 13-point lead in the latest polls. There are House races that the Republicans need to compete in there, of course, but there’s only so much the voters of North Carolina can do to preserve Trump’s trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House.
But like any gangster, the details of the extortion rarely matter to Trump. It’s all leverage and threats, carrots and sticks. The job of the president is to protect the people of the United States. Extortion, often, begins with a crook offering their “protection.” And just like any good protection scheme, many American voters may feel they have no choice but to accept.