Donald Trump has used the address to the nation for something very different from what the format requires. He has not explained the state of the country: he has explained why he believes he still deserves applause. With popularity at a minimum and the economy as the main focus of wear and tear, the president has chosen to exaggerate his achievements and turn an institutional intervention into an exercise in political reaffirmation.
The framework was set from the first sentence. “Good evening, America. Eleven months ago I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it,” Trump said as he began his speech. The idea not only opened the intervention, it crossed it completely. Everything that goes wrong belongs to the past; everything that begins to go well, to the present that he embodies. In just twenty minutes, the president mentioned his predecessor, Joe Biden, on several occasions, until he became universally responsible for the rising cost of living, healthcare, immigration and the general economic climate.
This emphasis does not respond to a rhetorical tic, but to a very specific political need. Polls place Trump’s approval at its lowest levels since his return to the White House, with special punishment in economic management. The speech did not seek so much to convince new voters as to shield its own and offer them a coherent story. “It’s not my fault” was not said literally, but it was suggested by each block of the message.
To support that story, Trump resorted to strong statements and debatable figures. “Wages are rising faster than inflation,” he said, before proclaiming that the United States is “prepared for an economic boom like the world has never seen.” The president spoke of gasoline prices that “just dropped to $1.99 in some states” and of cuts in medicines of “400, 500 and even 600%,” a sequence of figures designed to impress more than to withstand the contrast with official data.
Exaggeration thus appears not as a specific excess, but as a discursive method. Trump does not qualify or acknowledge friction. Stretch the achievements, slim down the problems and move the solutions to the immediate future. “I am lowering those prices and I am lowering them very quickly,” he stated, without going into the factors—such as the tariffs imposed by his own Administration—that have contributed to the rise in inflation in recent months.
The most concrete announcement of the speech was the sending of a check for $1,776 to 1.45 million members of the Armed Forces. “The checks are already on the way,” Trump said, presenting what he has dubbed the “warrior dividend.” The gesture, loaded with patriotic symbolism, functioned more as an identity message than as a structural response to the economic malaise recognized by the polls themselves.
The staging reinforced that logic. Trump spoke from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, flanked by Christmas trees and with a portrait of George Washington behind him. The decoration evoked solemnity and national unity, but the tone approached that of a fast-paced rally, with short sentences, constant emphases, and a rhythm that bordered on anger. The president himself went so far as to state that “a year ago our country was dead… now we are the most attractive country in the world,” a formulation more typical of a campaign than an institutional balance.
The silences were also eloquent. Trump avoided substantive references to international fronts that have generated controversy in recent weeks and tiptoed around issues that divide even his electorate. The speech focused almost exclusively on the domestic economy, following the advice of his allies, even if it was at the cost of simplifying it beyond recognition.
The result is an address to the nation that says less about the country than about the political moment of its president. Trump exaggerates his achievements not because he believes the balance is incontestable, but because the polls are tight and the format offers him a privileged speaker. Instead of adjusting the story to reality, he preferred to adjust reality to the story.
Thus, the institutional message becomes one more piece of the permanent campaign. There is no will to be accountable or to organize public debate. There is a more immediate urgency: maintaining control of the story when the data and the social mood begin to go the other way. In that context, exaggerating is not a mistake. It’s the strategy.
