President Donald Trump is tripling down on his dubious promise to send $5,000 checks to every American if Republicans keep control of Congress next month while simultaneously warning that a Democratic victory would bring “an economic depression.”

“I’m going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000,” Trump says in the 42-second clip, which was posted by the White House Monday to his rarely-used X account.

“Democrat policies won’t allow this to happen. In fact, the opposite. They’re going to raise your taxes. If the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression. If the Republicans win, you will each have $5,000 in your pocket and economic success for our country like we have never ever seen before.”

The video makes explicit what Trump declined to say last Wednesday in the Oval Office, when The Independent asked him whether he was sending money to Americans in hopes they would vote for his party.

At the time, he did not answer the question directly but instead claimed the payments were a reward for cheating country’s purported economic success.

“What we’re doing is we have tremendous growth. We have the greatest growth of any country, maybe ever in history,” he said instead. “We’re able to do this that the Democrats can’t, because they would’ve not … been able to use tariffs so wisely like we did.”

Five days later, his own social media account was telling voters the payment depends on how they vote.

Trump first floated the “dividend” last month at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas. “Because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” he said then, and he has since insisted the checks will “100 percent” go out.

The administration has not said how it would pay for the checks, which would dwarf stimulus payments made during the Covid-19 pandemic that Republicans almost universally opposed.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the money will not come from taxpayers, while National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett has said Congress could approve the payments through budget reconciliation, a process that would let Republicans pass them without Democratic votes.

There are roughly 270 million adults in the United States, which puts the cost of a $5,000 payment to each of them at around $1.35 trillion — more than three times what the federal government collected in customs duties in the last fiscal year.

Several Republicans have already said they oppose the plan, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, both of whom pointed to the debt as a reason to say no.

The national debt passed $40 trillion for the first time in August.

The $5,000 pledge is the largest of several payments the administration has announced in the run-up to Election Day. Trump said last week that more than 20 million seniors would get $90 each to offset Medicare Part B premiums, and the administration has begun mailing $500 refund checks to about 1 million people it says were overcharged for Affordable Care Act coverage.

The promises come as Trump’s standing with voters sits at the lowest point of either of his terms. A Pew Research Center survey taken September 28 to October 4 put his approval at 30 percent, with 68 percent disapproving, and Reuters/Ipsos has had him at 32 percent in its last two polls. Just 17 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the cost of living in the most recent AP-NORC survey, the issue voters consistently rank first. Among registered voters, Pew found Democrats ahead on the congressional ballot by 44 percent to 36 percent, and 44 percent said their vote next month would be a vote against the president.