'Now We're the Hottest Country Anywhere in the World': Trump's Blessedly Pointless National Address
Trump announced neither stimulus checks nor war in Venezuela.
Was this going to be an evening for routine presidential puffery, or for offering to cut tariff "rebate checks" to all Americans? Or, perhaps, for announcing an attack on Venezuela? Rumors about both of the latter had been swirling. Thankfully, they were wrong.
Still, it's a testament to nothing good that folks couldn't be quite sure going in. After all, just two days ago, President Donald Trump declared fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction and callously mocked two murder victims. He's taken to ordering the bombing of boats of alleged "narcoterrorists" in the Caribbean, due process be damned, and said last week that U.S. action in Venezuela could be coming "very soon."
So when Trump suddenly announced this week that he would be addressing the nation live from the White House on Wednesday evening, it understandably spurred a little trepidation.
But the only thing we had to fear was an insanely inflated annual performance review.
Trump opened with a rant about how the Biden administration had failed to secure the borders and "we had…transgender for everybody." After going on in that vein for a while, we heard that now, we "have a president who fights for the law-abiding, hard-working people of the country" and, for the past seven months, "zero illegal aliens" had been allowed into the country. We now have "the strongest border in the history of our country," Trump said.
We heard Trump mythology about how he made Washington, D.C., safe, destroyed drug cartels, broke "the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools," created jobs, brought down turkey prices, "restored American strength, settled eight wars," and brought "peace to the Middle East."
Last year, our country was ready to fail, Trump added. "Now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world."
Trump went on to sing the praises of his tariffs, pledging to send all soldiers $1,776 "warrior dividends" (the "checks are already on the way").
That was the most concrete plan offered, despite the fact that the White House had been pitching this speech as an opportunity for Trump to tease upcoming policies.
We got some vague nods to housing policy plans and lowering health care costs. But again and again, the speech just came back to Trump bashing the Biden administration and singing his own praises.
And thank goodness. It was a perfectly pointless speech, and that's the best we could have hoped for.
