Perhaps the oddest thing about Trump’s televised address last night is how little splash it’s making this morning. Usually after some political event of any significance, media will be bursting with commentary about it within just a few hours. There is some commentary, of course, but the headlines are still mostly pointing to other news — Susie Wiles, Jack Smith, Venezuela. It’s as if much of the political press watched the speech, thought, “Well, that sucked,” and went back to what they’d been talking about before.
Right-wing media are dutifully taking the speech seriously, of course. This is an actual, unaltered screen grab from the Breitbart page this morning:
Should someone explain math to them? Or do we just let them live with their delusions?
I confess I probably watched less than three minutes before I bailed. I didn’t need to hear the same old lies all over again.
Of what commentary there is, the best I’ve seen is by Zack Beauchamp at Vox, courtesy of Yahoo News: The revealing pointlessness of Trump’s primetime speech.
President Donald Trump’s speech on Wednesday night had no grave significance. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much of a point at all.
The speech was a jumble of his usual false or even impossible claims — like a promise to reduce prescription drug costs by an impossible 400 percent — smashed together in no particular order. The speech began with a discussion of the cost of living, a subject he would drop and then return to as if just remembering that it was the number one reason his polls were low. Even the delivery was weird: Seemingly under network time constraints, the president read off the teleprompter angrily and quickly, speaking with the motormouth intensity of a 20-something banker who just discovered cocaine and now has a really great idea for a new restaurant.
So why am I writing about it at all?
Because the fact that it happened at all tells us something much more important: that the Trump administration is sinking, and his White House has no idea what to do about it.
He really did seem angry at Americans for not appreciating his greatness. But his administration is sinking, and he honestly doesn’t understand why or what to do about it.
In Trump’s mind everything must be going just fine because he’s in charge, even if he hasn’t actually done anything to address the issues facing us. As Jamelle Bouie, wrote yesterday, “Trump is a ubiquitous cultural presence, but there is no outward sign that he is an active participant in running the national government.” I mean, he got elected, right? And he enacted tariffs and got his Big Ugly Bill passed, and now everything is supposed to be great. Why are people bothering him with details? Why doesn’t everybody love him?
Trump’s pathological need for approval and recognition of his innate superiority was on display earlier yesterday. He has hung portraits of former presidents along a corridor in the White House with plaques beneath giving us Trump’s opinions of them. Many of the captions in the plaques were written by Trump himself and are dripping with ridicule. Joe Biden’s portrait is actually a photograph of an autopen. He seems to think that tearing down his opponents illuminates him in greater greatness, or something. Of course, it just illuminates how immature and petty he is.
There are several fact checks of the speech — here’s one from CNN — and it appears he said very little that was verifiably true. And it was nearly all stuff he’s said before, many times, and there’s not a lot of point in reviewing it. Which may be why there isn’t that much commentary. But the speech overall made him look desperate, angry, and even more pathetic.
He's the towering abusive husband standing over a bleeding woman screaming, "Why don't you love me – I gave you everything." The primetime speech was the suggestion someone had for how to address Trump's sinking popularity, but no one thought a coherent message was important.
I think Trump's popularity is essential for Trump to continue with Project 2025 and the handlers know it. This was an attempt that failed to address the bleeding support.
"I confess I probably watched less than three minutes before I bailed"
That's about one hundred and seventy six seconds more than I could stomach! It is completely pointless to listen to anything diaper don says, especially if it has been loaded into a teleprompter. It's all the same old nonsense, no one except his dullest magat mouth breathers believe anything that come out of that disgusting pie hole. I saw this as the best summary of the "speech":
https://i.ibb.co/zTMcxDS9/IMG-2722.jpg
Yeah, just hearing him bothers me. Occasionally, I'll read through an entire speech, but I never watch or listen to him when I can avoid it. I'm stuck hearing snippets on NPR a few times a week.
I strongly advise others to avoid the annoyance of listening to Trump.
The White House remarks were a chance for Trump to try to regain some momentum after Republican losses in this year’s elections raised questions about the durability of his coalition. He openly leaned into the politics despite television networks’ past reluctance to broadcast presidential addresses loaded with campaign-style rhetoric.
For example, in September 2022, networks declined to give the Biden White House a prime-time slot for a speech the then-president gave about democracy because it was viewed as too political.
(Associated Press)
It was bizarre. No one even a Trump lover could pretend it was normal. And the entire world saw it. If they hadn't already bailed on USA, they will now.
What were the creeps in the White House thinking? As crazy as they are ( think Kirk's memorial) , how could they think this accomplished anything for them? It can only tell any rational person that we cannot give this deranged man another year.(Pelosi, talking to you). The Democrats will miss their chance to put up ads that simply show Jack Smith testifies to judiciary and Epstein files continue to dribble out and wars for oil and regime change never do good in this world, while showing this screaming high or simply sped up tape or AI Trump spewing lies faster than a machine gun. Because Democrats never meet the moment.
Oh look diaper don lied? He said the $1,776.00 he was giving to our "troops" was from the gazillion dollars we have made from from his beautiful tariffs. Nope the cash came from a supplemental housing fund that was part of the big ugly bill. So that's like someone taking money from your back pocket and handing it to you and saying "good job here is a bonus". I'm shocked he almost never lies!
"Trump will use military housing money for $1,776 Pentagon bonuses"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/18/trumps-1776-warrior-dividends-pentagon-tariffs/87833418007/
Imagine Trump walking dignitaries down the hall of presidents, showing them these juvenile plaques he put up for Biden and Obama, two presidents who, unlike Trump, were respected in the world and loved by many, and the embarrassment they'll feel. Imagine how they feel about Trump when he rattles off his standard lies about Biden to them, justifyng the plaques when they know damn well Biden’s accomplishments. These plaques say more about Trump, none of it good, than they say about Biden and Obama. Regardless of the fact that he has no control over his own warped emotions, that he even thinks creating plaques like these and putting them up in a historic hall of presidents is a good thing, is just more evidence that he's intellectually and morally unfit to be president. To bad the latest white house "adult in the room" Susie Wiles couldn't convince this child of a man how badly this reflects on him.
I find it really sad. Trump's insecurity is so deep it's a sickness. The weird thing is, his followers mistake it for 'strength'.