Donald Trump chose this Wednesday night (Washington time) a format reserved for big occasions, that of the televised address to the nation, for one of his favorite activities: celebrating himself based on lies, half-truths and exaggerations in an effort to take control of the story of the progress of the economy, which has caused him the worst popularity crisis since his return to power last January.
He spoke with a tense and impatient expression for 18 minutes, in which at times it seemed that he was shouting at his compatriots from the room in the White House designated for diplomatic receptions. The idea was to say goodbye to the first year of his second presidency with a balance of what was achieved. The result sounded like a nervous and impotent justification for his failures in economic matters, a year after Americans chose him to mitigate the cost of living tolls.
“11 months ago, I inherited a disaster,” he said at the beginning of his speech in which he insisted again and again on blaming his predecessor, Joe Biden, as well as on some of the well-known fetishes of his rhetoric: from the attack on trans people and the racist and xenophobic arguments to the supposed invasion of the worst criminals, freed from “prisons and mental hospitals” and sent to the United States by enemy countries.
“In other words, in a short time, we have gone from the worst to the best,” Trump said. “We are now the sexiest country in the world, every single foreign leader I talk to tells me.”
Towards the end, he summarized everything that, in his opinion, he has achieved since he returned to the Oval Office without caring, as usual, that many of these arguments were coming into direct contradiction with reality, as when he spoke of the improvement in unemployment data (and the latest data, known this week, is three tenths above the figure that Biden left him).
“Our border is secure,” he said. “Inflation is restrained, wages are rising and prices are falling. Our nation is strong. America is respected and our country is back stronger than ever. We are ready for an economic boom like the world has never seen.”
The American president also did not miss the opportunity to paint an apocalyptic portrait of the country before his return. “For the last four years, the United States was governed by politicians who only fought for the interests of a few, illegal immigrants, habitual criminals, corporate lobbyists, prisoners, terrorists and, above all, foreign nations that took advantage of us at levels never seen before,” he asserted.
He had promised that he would draw up some of the guidelines of what to expect from his Administration during 2026, but, again, he did so impatiently, as if he were angry at having to waste time with promises, which there were also. His Administration, he announced, will give a check for $1,776 (a figure with patriotic echoes; it was in 1776 when independence was declared, a milestone that will mark 250 years in 2026) to the military. He called it “the warriors’ stipend.”
The speech – which was subject to some seams, time and format, with which he is not comfortable, because his thing is interventions without looking at the clock and with space to move away and ramble – also had something of a campaign opening act. In November, the crucial midterm legislative elections will be held, in which Republicans could lose one or both Chambers on Capitol Hill. That would greatly complicate the second part of his second presidency for Trump.
It is difficult to imagine a worse starting point for that appointment: the president finds himself, 11 months before the polls, in the middle of something that closely resembles a perfect storm. 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 he pays to international political issues and that he could be dedicating to the ideals of America First, and, despite the impatience with which he accepts criticism about the cost of living and inflation, stubborn at around 3%, his compatriots feel in their pockets the poor performance of the economy, of which another new test came on Tuesday, with the worst unemployment data since 2021.
Nor does it help his popularity that Trump dismisses these concerns, defining them as “a Democratic hoax” or that he rated the state of the economy in a recent interview with an A++++++ (something like a cum laude honors degree cubed).
Broken promises
The stubbornness of the data haunts the American president, who was re-elected four years after leaving the White House, mainly because of his promises that he would be able to fix 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 turned the cost of living into their main argument for winning elections.
Expectation was high, also because a few hours earlier the ultraconservative announcer Tucker Carlson, champion of conspiracy, had let it slip that Trump was ready to take advantage of that solemn window to declare war on Venezuela. It didn’t happen. The US president did not even refer to the growing pressure that, thanks to a phenomenal military deployment with few precedents in the Caribbean, Washington is exerting on Nicolás Maduro to, under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, force a regime change, and, as has become completely clear in recent days, access the South American country’s oil reserves.
It was on Tuesday when Trump announced his intention to speak to his compatriots. He did so, as usual, on his social network, Truth, in a post he wrote on Tuesday: “It has been a great year for our country, AND THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” A few hours later, he told reporters he was trying to stress that he inherited a “disaster” from his predecessor, Joe Biden. “We have done a great job. We continue to do so. 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.
[Noticia de última hora. Habrá actualización en breve].
