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“Would you take the money?”
I hadn’t heard a thing from my old friend Séimí for a few months, and that was the first thing he said after I answered the phone.
“What money?”
“Trump’s money, you know.”
The last time I had seen Séimí, he was standing outside Woodies in Kilkenny in the pouring rain, looking like a drowned rat. I took him under my golf umbrella and we walked over to Meubles for lunch.
Over soup and brown bread we talked about the ré mhíshocair—the unsettled times—we seemed to be living through.
Séimí has wandered in and out of this column for decades. He would often turn up unexpectedly in my father’s columns. Now he was doing the same to me.
Donald Trump had recently been speaking at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us, and every adult citizen will get $5,000,” he told the crowd.
He called it the “Trump Dividend.”
“Would you take it?” Séimí asked.
“Of course I would,” I said.
“So will you vote Republican then, Micheál?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. When would you get the money?”
“First the Republicans would have to win the House and Senate in the midterm election.”
“And then?”
“Congress would have to approve the money.”
“So even if they win, you still mightn’t get it?”
“That’s right.”
“Some promise that is. And where will he get the money?”
“He says the government is taking in trillions.”
“From where?”
“Tariffs, I suppose.”
“I thought the Supreme Court threw out his tariffs.”
“They threw out a lot of them.”
“And the money they collected from those?”
“It has to be given back.”
“So he’s going to give ye five thousand dollars out of tariff money he has to give back?”
“Not exactly. They’re collecting other tariffs now.”
“Will those be enough to pay for it?”
“No. Not a chance.”
“Where will they get the rest?”
“Borrowing, I suppose.”
“And who’ll pay that back?”
“We will, one way or another.”
“How much does America owe already?”
“More than forty trillion dollars.”
“Forty trillion?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to borrow another trillion?”
“If everything goes Trump’s way, yes.”
“Right.”
“So then he borrows five grand for each of ye.”
“And ye pay it back.”
“We do.”
“Then he wouldn’t be giving ye any money. It’s a five-thousand-dollar loan for each of ye.”
“True.”
“And if another trillion was borrowed, could prices go up?”
“They could.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
“He did. A couple of times. Two grand the last time.”
“What happened to that?”
“We never saw a penny.”
“And it’s five grand this time?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“You’d have to ask Trump that.”
“Inflation, maybe?”
I laughed.
I could hear a television in the background. Missiles exploding.
“How’s the war going?” Séimí asked.
“Trump says it’ll be over soon.”
“When?”
“After the election.”
“Couldn’t he end it now?”
“You’d have to ask Trump that too.”
“Didn’t he say it would be a one-month war?”
“He did.”
“And it’s been going on for six months?”
“More.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
“Well, diesel has gone over six dollars a gallon.”
“And the delivery trucks run on that, don’t they?”
“They do indeed.”
“So that makes everything they carry more expensive.”
“It does.”
“I heard you have to spend the money in America?”
“That’s what Trump said, yeah.”
“So each of ye gets a five-thousand-dollar loan and Trump tells ye where ye have to spend it?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s right.”
Finally Séimí spoke.
“I’d take the money too.”
“Ghlacfainnse an t-airgead freisin.”
English 
Gaeilge