Trump’s new low: $500 “refund” checks to 950,000 people and a “Love Me” brainwashing campaign for $20 million. Even so, he will suffer a loss in the mid-terms.

Just when I thought every Trump’s slimiest bit of corruption has already come to pass, he has presented us with two new and even lower grifts than the $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency proceeds he picked up in his first year, second pass as P!resident.

Last week, Trump re-released a campaign ad from 3 years ago, slightly altered and abridged, as a “public service announcement” or “One Big Beautiful Bill Act commemorative events”, paid for from the Customs and Border Protection budget with $20 million allocated to TV ad buys and $2.5 million spent already. The ad is a 30 second long video with multiple views of Trump striding purposely and a chorus singing “Love Me, Love Me”. It aired during football games last weekend.

The artist whose music is used in the video has already demanded that Trump cease and desist the unauthorized use of that music. The more important issue, however, is that the ad is not just propaganda, which is bad enough. I viewed it, so you don’t have to. It subtly shades directly into brainwashing techniques that have been used, especially in film, for many years.

The video starts with Trump boldly pronouncing that he will stop “socialism, communism, Marxism” from taking hold in the United States. He claims, “America will never be a communist country.” No kidding? Trump’s words, about defeating communism, Marxism, and socialism, are nothing but labels that he uses to describe the “left-wing lunatics”, the Democrats (who would be considered center-right in any European country).

One such brainwashing technique is to present very brief snatches of text for very short intervals of perhaps a tenth of a second, so that they cannot be consciously read unless they are repeated. They are so short that the messages are not reliably consciously received. There are several texts, presented in red on a black screen; the first reads, “Largest tax cut in history” ( which is of course not true), and another reads, “Defend law and order and the police”.

These “subliminal” or near-subliminal presentations don’t work very well, although a fear word presented for a less-than-consciously short period can raise heart rate and fear hormones in the blood. The presentation of these subliminal words appears amateurish at best.

Another old brainwashing technique is the repetition, “Love Me, Love Me” by the chorus in reverent tones. Of course, repeating an exhortation like that gives it much more force, just as a repeated assertion gains credibility.

The video continues with a fighter jet flyover of the White House and other patriotic images over continued “Love me, Love me” repeatedly reverently.

The fact that Trump’s handlers would produce and present this subtly brainwashing video to his gullible public and pay for it with government money is a new low in corruption. He’s using government money for political purposes despite the fact that he is sitting on hundreds of millions in campaign contributions and PAC money.

Bribery is in the news, reported by CNBC, that his government has selected roughly 950,000 people for “refunds” of $500 each. The refunds are said to be related to overpayments for health insurance on the exchanges and are being paid to people who made more than 4X the poverty level and so didn’t qualify for subsidies. Something like that. There is supposedly a $500 million surplus in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) coffers that this is supposed to address. The payout is supposed to paper over the fact that subsidies have been cancelled, resulting in doubling of health insurance premiums for millions of people who earn more than the poverty level but less than 400%.

The “refunds” appear to be going to people who are heavily Trump-centric in any case– thus unlikely to change a lot of votes. This is an extension of the tricks Trump pulled before with his signature on refund checks. He thinks that his signature on a check is going to change votes, which is entirely possible but despicable just the same.

I had been concerned that Trump would try to directly interfere with the elections by seizing ballots or sending ICE to polling places. There are even stories about preventing the swearing-in of newly elected members of Congress, but those are highly unlikely according to experts in Congressional protocol. This news of “refund” checks and brainwashing videos is certainly a new low, but I don’t think it will affect the mid-term elections that much.

Look at where where Trump choses to hold his first big rallies after a long hiatus: Alabama and Oklahoma, two of the reddest states in the country. He’s not campaigning in any states that are in play.

The trouble that Trump is having is that he has almost single-handedly induced a blue wave. His overall approval ratings have descended below 37%. Continued inflation, tariffs, the war on Iran and its effect on oil prices, and the excesses of his administration on immigration and across the board, are all weighing on his popularity, even among some of his base voters.

This is analogous to the thesis that having more money than your opponent, even in the Citizens United era, is no guarantee of winning if you’re the victim of a wave or you have a very unpopular candidate.

It is possible that Trump will receive a comeuppance on November 3, 2026 at the mid-term elections that will be so overwhelming that he’ll be unable to hide it or deny it. Beware that if he is wounded, he will respond by doubling down on his least popular policies.