WASHINGTON – Democrats blasted President Donald Trump’s performance at the Republican National Convention as a liability to lawmakers campaigning in the midterm elections and called his offer of $5,000 to every adult for a GOP victory “blatantly illegal.”
Trump rallied supporters at the first Republican midterm convention by urging them to campaign as if he were on the ballot. He warned against "radical-left" Democrats and pledged a $5,000 dividend based on the country’s economic success if Republicans hold Congress Nov. 3.
But Democrats sought to chain Trump's low approval ratings to Republican candidates like an anchor. Democrats criticized Trump for the war in Iran, unlawful tariffs that the Supreme Court overturned and for “stripping millions
of Americans of their health insurance” through Medicaid cuts.
“Americans paid record-high gas prices on Labor Day,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, said on social media. “Republicans promised to lower costs. Their reckless war of choice in Iran and the Trump Tariffs have instead made life way more expensive. They are all unfit to govern.”
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker stood across the street from the American Airlines Center in Dallas, where the convention was being held, and accused Republicans of trying to hide Trump's handling of Iran and inflation.
"This bizarre Republican midterm convention here can't paper over the fact that Republicans have done nothing to earn your vote," Pritzker said.
Rep. Dan Goldman, D-New York, a former House staffer who worked on Trump’s first impeachment, called the president’s $5,000 pledge “corrupt and blatantly illegal.”
A federal statute makes it illegal to offer or make an expenditure to any person to vote or withhold a vote, with a maximum penalty for a willful violation of two years in prison and a fine.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called the proposal a “political bribe” that would add $1.3 trillion to the “wreckage of this fantastically reckless and dysfunctional presidency.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, who has criticized Trump forfailing to release all the Justice Department files about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and about the war in Iran, said in a sarcastic social media post that he wouldn’t accept less than $10,000.
“I don’t know about you all, but frankly I’m insulted by the notion that my vote this November could be bought for 5k,” Massie said. “Not to mention the inflation this would cause.”
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said called Trump “the biggest liability in American politics” in the midterm election because of his “rock bottom” 33% approval rating.
“Republicans now have to spin his disastrous, rambling speech when it’s clear that this bizarre dog-and-pony show is being held to placate Trump’s fragile ego,” Martin said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Unfit to govern': Democrats blast Trump, GOP for Iran and economy
