The idea behind a year-end presidential address isn’t necessarily unreasonable. In late December, it stands to reason that White House officials would take a moment to pause, reflect and take stock of the year that was, giving the public an assessment of their performance.
That is, in theory.
In practice, Donald Trump’s year-end prime-time address presented the American public with 18 minutes of combative presidential blame-shifting and excuse-making, packaged in the unsubtle desperation of a man who doesn’t seem to understand why so much of the public doesn’t appreciate his systemic failures and embarrassments.
But above all, the Republican president did what he always does: He lied uncontrollably. In fact, his speech was so littered with brazen falsehoods that it was rather easy to come up with a top 10 list.
#10: “Already, I’ve secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States.” It’d be great if that were true, but it’s not.
#9: “Our country was being invaded by an army of 25 million people.” That total wasn’t even close to being true.
#8: “I was elected in a landslide.” No, he wasn’t.
#7: “The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33% compared to the Biden last year.” Is he still peddling this nonsense? Evidently, yes, though it’s still not true.
#6: Trump said the Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed this year included, among other things, “no tax on Social Security.” That might sound nice, but that wasn’t actually a part of the far-right package.
#5: “When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country.” Trump says this all the time, but it’s demonstrably false.
#4: “I’ve … settled eight wars in 10 months.” I get the sense that he’s convinced himself that this happened, but it hasn’t, no matter how many times he repeats the line.








