If you thought Trump’s midterm campaign couldn’t get any stranger, Wednesday’s Republican convention in Dallas arrived with a very different answer: apparently, it can get hornier, weirder and significantly more expensive.
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President Donald Trump used his convention speech to joke repeatedly about Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, floated a $5,000 payment for every American adult if Republicans win the House and Senate, and somehow brought left-wing streamer Hasan Piker into the spectacle after a photo of Piker in his underwear appeared on giant screens inside the arena.
So, yes. Quite a lot happened at this campaign event. And somehow, it all happened in the same room.
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Trump discovers the phrase “beat meat”
Trump’s speech took an especially juvenile turn when he attacked Talarico, a Texas Democrat running for Senate, by riffing on a supposed campaign phrase involving the words “beat meat.”
“He wants to beat meat?” he snickered.
Trump: Beat meat? I don’t know what the hell that means. He wants to beat meat. He started eating meat. I’m getting myself in trouble. He was recently seen eating a lot of meat. pic.twitter.com/E8KMinjRFL
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 10, 2026
Trump referred to Talarico as “Tala-Freako” before returning to the meat joke, telling Republicans gathered at Dallas’ American Airlines Center:
“He was also somebody that hated eating meat,” Trump told Republicans in Dallas’ American Airlines Center. “But he ran a campaign to beat meat. He called it ‘beat meat.’ I don’t know what the hell he meant by that. These people are gonna tell me, what the hell is he … he wants to beat meat?”
The president, apparently satisfied that the joke had not yet been sufficiently stretched beyond its natural lifespan, kept going.
“But it was bad for his image, so he started eating meat,” he said. “And he recently, hah hah, it’s getting worse, I’m getting myself in trouble. It’s getting worse. But he was recently seen having a barbecue and eating a lot of meat. But that’s what happened. He ate it and then he was seen running backstage to a room and throwing up all over the place. He doesn’t like meat.”
There is, however, an important detail missing from that particular comedy routine: Talarico doesn’t appear to have publicly thrown up after eating barbecue, nor does he appear to have used “beat meat” as a campaign slogan.
In fact, Talarico has previously pushed back against claims that he is vegan, pointing out that barbecue is very much part of his Texas identity.
“I’m an eighth-generation Texan. I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment,” he said previously. “And if all they have on me is lying about me being a vegan, I feel pretty good about our chances this November.”
Which means the alleged vegan smear campaign has now somehow become part of a presidential speech featuring an extended masturbation joke. American politics, everybody.
Then came the $5,000 “Trump Dividend”
If the meat material was the campaign’s comedy segment, the $5,000 promise was its financial plot twist. Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of both the House and Senate in the midterm elections.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the convention. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”
Trump compared the proposed payments to corporate dividends distributed to shareholders, pointing to what he described as the country’s economic strength and success.
There is, naturally, a rather enormous little detail attached to that promise: the money would require congressional approval, and the proposal could cost more than $1 trillion.
Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, argued that Trump does not have the authority to simply send the money without Congress and questioned the logic of calling it a dividend while the country is running massive deficits.
“The idea that we’ve had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable,” he said. “We don’t have surpluses to give away.”
Vice President JD Vance appeared to partially walk back the proposal within an hour, suggesting the payments would not go to wealthy Americans and pointing toward tariff revenue as a possible funding source. The problem is that the proposed $5,000 payments would dwarf the amount collected through tariffs.
So the campaign has effectively introduced a new economic concept: what if a dividend were announced before anyone checked the dividend account?
And then Hasan Piker’s underwear entered the chat
As if Trump’s speech needed another unexpected subplot, Hasan Piker got dragged into the convention spectacle too.
A photograph of Piker in his underwear appeared briefly on giant screens during a video shown at the opening day of the Republican Midterm Convention.
@hasandpiker they put my schmeat on the republican national convention jumbotron #hasanabi #trump #rnc #hasan #hasanpiker
Piker, a self-described socialist with a large online following, reacted in disbelief while watching footage of the event during a livestream.
“What the f***?” the left-wing streamer said.
“Nooo!” he added while laughing. “They f****** posted the meat pic! Nooo! Yo! They posted the meat pic at the f****** Trumpalooza!”
Yes, “the meat pic” is now apparently part of the official midterm-election cinematic universe.
The image appeared behind the stage inside the Dallas arena on Wednesday as Republicans increasingly use Piker as a symbol of the Democratic Party’s left flank ahead of the November elections.
Which is one way to run a political campaign. Another way is to discuss policy. But Wednesday’s Republican convention apparently had other priorities.
Three campaign moments, one extremely strange day
Taken separately, each development is unusual enough to dominate its own news cycle. Put them together, and the result feels less like a traditional political convention and more like someone opened 37 tabs and refused to close any of them.
Trump spent part of his speech riffing on “beat meat.” He promised a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” to every American adult if Republicans win both chambers of Congress. Then a giant screen briefly displayed a photo of Hasan Piker in his underwear. Somewhere in all of that was an actual midterm election.
The $5,000 proposal is the biggest of the three stories in practical terms, given its potential cost and the need for congressional approval. The Piker footage shows how aggressively Republicans are trying to turn prominent figures on the left into campaign villains. And the Talarico segment is a reminder that, at least for Trump, a political attack can apparently begin with a policy dispute and end somewhere around a middle-school joke about meat.
The midterms are still months away. At this rate, perhaps keep the group chat muted.
Want to watch the full speech for yourself? You can watch Trump’s full midterm convention speech here.