Donald Trump chose this Wednesday evening (Washington time) a format reserved for special occasions, that of the televised address to the nation, for one of his favorite activities: celebrating himself with lies, half-truths and exaggerations in an attempt to take control of the story of the progress of the economy, which caused him the worst popularity crisis since his return to power last January.
He spoke with a tense and impatient expression for 18 minutes, during which he appeared to shout at his compatriots from the White House room reserved for diplomatic receptions. The idea was to say goodbye to the first year of his second presidency. The result sounds like a nervous justification of his policy which, according to polls, does not convince the Americans, who voted for him above all with their wallets and who do not feel that things have improved.
“11 months ago, I inherited a disaster,” he said at the start of his speech in which he repeatedly emphasized the attacks on his predecessor, Joe Biden, as well as some of the well-known fetishes of his rhetoric: from the attack on trans people and racist and xenophobic arguments to the alleged invasion of the worst criminals, released from psychiatric sanatoriums and sent by enemy countries.
“In other words, in a short period of time, we went from worst to best,” he said. “We are now the sexiest country in the world, every foreign leader I speak with tells me.” Towards the end, he summarized everything he believes he has accomplished since his return to the Oval Office, seemingly oblivious to the fact that many of these arguments were in direct contradiction with reality, such as when he talked about improving unemployment data (the latest known data shows an unemployment rate three-tenths higher than the one he inherited from Biden). “Our border is secure,” he said. “Inflation is under control, wages are rising and prices are falling. Our nation is strong. America is respected and our country is coming back stronger than ever. We are poised for an economic boom like the world has never seen.”
“For the past four years, the United States has been governed by politicians who only fought for the interests of a handful of illegal immigrants, habitual criminals, corporate lobbyists, prisoners, terrorists and, above all, foreign nations who took advantage of us at levels never seen before,” he said. “They have flooded our cities and towns with illegal immigrants. They have decimated our hard-worked economies. They have indoctrinated our children with hatred of America. And they have released unprecedented numbers of violent criminals to attack innocent people.”
He was expected to give some broad outlines of what he can expect (given his unpredictable personality) from his administration over the course of 2026. November will see the crucial midterm elections, in which Republicans could lose one or both chambers of the Capitol, making the second half of his second presidency much more complicated for Trump.
His intervention was subject to certain seams, of time and format, with which he is not comfortable: his thing is interventions without looking at the clock and with space to move away and move away from the text that his speechwriters prepare for him.
This speech comes at one of Trump’s worst moments since the start of his second presidency. The polls are not favorable to him, the base of his MAGA (Make America Great Again) faithful is beginning to lose patience with the attention that the president pays to international political issues and which he could devote to the ideals of America first, and, despite the impatience with which he accepts criticism on the cost of living and inflation, tenacious around 3%, his compatriots feel in their pockets the poor performance of the economy, of which new proof arrived on Tuesday, with the worst figure of the unemployment since 2021. It also doesn’t help that Trump dismisses these concerns, defining them as “a Democratic hoax.”
Broken promises
Data stubbornness haunts the US president, re-elected four years after leaving the White House, mainly because of his promises that he would be able to repair the economy. Thirteen months later, he is still determined to blame his predecessor, Joe Biden, for a problem that has long been his, while the new Democratic faces have made the cost of living their main argument for winning the election.
The wait was high, especially because a few hours earlier, ultraconservative presenter Tucker Carlson, champion of the conspiracy, had let slip that Trump was ready to take advantage of this solemn window to declare war on Venezuela. This did not happen. The American president did not even mention the growing pressure that, thanks to a phenomenal and unprecedented military deployment in the Caribbean, Washington is exerting on Nicolás Maduro to, under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, impose regime change and, as has become abundantly clear in recent days, access the South American country’s oil reserves.
It was on Tuesday that Trump announced his intention to speak to his compatriots. He did so, as usual, on his social network Truth, in a message he wrote on Tuesday: “It has been a great year for our country, AND THE BEST IS YET TO COME! ” Hours later, he told reporters he was trying to emphasize that he had inherited a “disaster” from his predecessor, Joe Biden. “We have done a great job. We continue to do it. And our country will be stronger than before,” he added.
Since his return to power last January, Trump has addressed the nation twice: on the occasion of the attack on three uranium production and storage plants in Iran at the end of June, and after the assassination of his ally, the young activist Charlie Kirk. So he did it with a recorded message.
(Breaking news. There will be an update soon.)
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