A Masterclass in Gaslighting

The pathetic "Walk of Fame" and the man who can’t quit Joe Biden.

“Merry Christmas, you ungrateful bastards.”

Look, if you’re looking for a heartwarming holiday tale about a reformed miser finding his soul, you’ve come to the wrong decade. Last night’s primetime “address to the nation” was less A Christmas Carol and more a twenty-minute hostage video filmed in a Hallmark store.

Donald Trump, appearing increasingly like a man trying to sell you a salvaged Cadillac while the engine is visibly on fire, took to the airwaves to explain why your empty wallet is actually a sign of overflowing prosperity. It was the “Bah! Humbug!” speech—a shouty, punctuation-free stream of consciousness delivered with the frantic energy of a guy who just realized the Diet Coke-to-blood ratio in his veins has reached critical mass.

Here is the “state of the union” for those of you who have better things to do than watch a septuagenarian rant at a fireplace:

The “Everything Is Great, You’re Just Stupid” Economy

The central thrust of this televised hallucination was that the economy is “poised” for a boom. It’s always “poised,” isn’t it? It’s never actually booming for anyone who doesn’t have a private jet, but it’s very much in a state of constant, aggressive poise. Trump claimed he inherited a “mess” and that inflation was the worst in 48 years when he took over—a lie so brazen it practically deserves its own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, considering inflation was sitting at about 3% when he walked back into the Oval.

But facts are for the “sinister woke radicals” he spent the rest of the time bashing. While 67% of the country tells pollsters his economic handling is a disaster, Trump’s solution is a “Warrior Dividend”—a $1,776 check for service members funded by tariffs. It’s classic Trumpian math: tax the American consumer at the checkout line, then hand a fraction of it back to a tiny sliver of the population as a “bonus” and call yourself Santa Claus.

The Great Susie Wiles Smoke Screen

The real reason for this primetime circus? Look no further than the Daily Beast report. Apparently, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles—the “ice maiden” who was supposed to keep the chaos in a nice, orderly folder—went off-script in a Vanity Fair interview, reportedly describing the boss as having an “alcoholic’s personality.”

Nothing says “I am a stable, sober leader” like rushing to a podium to scream about Somali immigrants and “reverse migration” while an usher frantically shuffles Diet Cokes into the frame. The speech was a desperate attempt to bury the “Wiles Disaster” and the looming Friday release of the Epstein files—the Ghost of Christmas Past that no amount of White House tinsel can hide.

The Nostalgia for a Punching Bag

The most pathetic part of the whole display was the “Presidential Walk of Fame”—a new White House feature where Trump literally installed plaques calling Obama “divisive” and Biden the “worst in history.”

He’s a man lost without a nemesis. Biden has been gone for nearly a year; he’s essentially a ghost at this point, but Trump is still swinging at him like a boxer in an empty ring. He needs a villain to explain why the “boom” hasn’t arrived, why the border is still his favorite scary story, and why the polls look like a heart monitor in a morgue.

The Aftermath

When the cameras finally cut, the pool reports say he turned to the press and asked, “You think that’s easy?” before taking a victory swig of soda.

Is it easy to stand in front of a nation and tell them their eyes are lying to them for twenty minutes straight? Probably not. But as the midterms approach and the Epstein files drop, Trump is learning that you can’t just “tariff” your way out of reality. It wasn’t a speech; it was a plea for attention from a man who realizes the audience is starting to change the channel.

Merry Christmas, America. Your present is a $1,700 bribe and a twenty-minute lecture from a guy who thinks a slight dip in gas prices is a miracle on par with the loaves and the fishes. Drink your Diet Coke and shut up.