Will Trump’s $5,000 offer convince US voters?

**Sarah Smith** (0:00)
Donald Trump thinks he has found the magic ingredient that will help the Republicans win the midterm elections. And surprise, surprise, it's him.

**Donald Trump** (0:09)
So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot.
Just one more time.

**Sarah Smith** (0:20)
We're in Dallas, where Donald Trump is throwing an event, a very unusual Republican Party convention, that is going to put him front and center of his party's midterm election campaign. He's even promising voters a large cash handout, if his party can win both houses of Congress in the midterm elections. But some of his most high-profile candidates are staying away. They don't want to be seen with Donald Trump at this event in Texas. Is that because they think the president's no longer a great electoral asset? Has he actually become a voting liability? Welcome to Americast.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:58)
Americast from BBC News.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:00)
Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:06)
The tide is coming and this time we intend to win it all.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:13)
See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.

**Donald Trump** (1:24)
When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

**Justin Webb** (1:36)
Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of Americast in London, England.

**Sarah Smith** (1:40)
It's Sarah here at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas.

**Justin Webb** (1:45)
Woohoo, Dallas, Texas. Tell us about it.

**Sarah Smith** (1:47)
It's great fun. It's really terribly hot. It's over 100 degrees. The best news is that I have already managed to acquire a new cowboy hat. So I'll show you here, Justin.
It's a very nice white hat with some turquoise and cowrie shell trim. We were interviewing a lady yesterday who's a big Trump supporter who also has a stall at the RNC where she sells these hats and people can design custom decorations on them. She was a fascinating interview actually. I'll tell you more about her later. A Trump fan who's a bit worried that he might not be the best advocate for their party come the midterm elections.

**Justin Webb** (2:24)
Yeah. I suppose that is the serious side of this, isn't it? It's whether the whole thing, I mean, number one, it's very unusual. But number two is whether there's any chance at all that it can work.

**Sarah Smith** (2:34)
Yeah. There's a real disconnect when you're here between what's happening with this convention and what we know is happening in the rest of the country. This is one of the things that's really fascinating because Donald Trump threw this party for himself, essentially. It's his idea to have a convention in a midterm year, which has never been done by the Republicans before. It's a big showcase for Donald Trump with him giving the keynote speech for almost two hours on Wednesday night. He's closing it out with a speech again on Thursday night.
Everybody in the convention is a very, very big Donald Trump fan. You wouldn't have come all the way here, paid all the money you have to to attend, unless you were an absolute diehard Donald Trump supporter. But that is such a contrast with what we know polls say about his record low approval ratings, about the discontent there is with high prices, with his war in Iran that's driving prices up further. And the real sense from a lot of Republican candidates, as well as from voters, that Donald Trump maybe is not the best advocate for his party at all, because he's personally pretty unpopular at the moment. So yeah, there's this Trumpapalooza, as it's being called, event inside the convention center, just at the point when actually, probably Donald Trump is more unpopular now than he has ever been.

**Justin Webb** (3:48)
Yeah, and we ought to remind Americasters, and Americasters know this stuff already, and we've talked about it so much, but these midterm elections are terribly important because of the balance of both houses of Congress. So it is quite likely we're saying, aren't we, that the Democrats will win back the House, and that would be a serious blow. They might win the Senate, that would be a very serious blow. And then there's all sorts of hearings they could hold, and impeachment and all the rest of it. And it just ties up the Trump administration then, in this really kind of desperate final two-year slog. So they're desperate to avoid it. We should also say, and Americasters know this, that generally a midterm election doesn't go the way of the party that has the presidency. That is generally the case. There are some important exceptions, and given the commemorations for 9-11 going on at the moment, it's worth remembering all the way back to 2002 because of the kind of coming together of the nation and all the rest of it.