David E. Sanger

Right.

And he went up and shook the hands of a couple of the justices, the ones who he said a few days ago their families would be ashamed of them.

He does.

And, you know, he opens up with an immediate reference to the 250th anniversary of the United States.

And I thought for a minute there, well, he's going to really go do a unifying speech here built around that theme.

The theme of a country that was in the throes of revolution has had divisions before and came together.

It's not quite what we got.

And then he launched into what turned out to be a play in three parts, right?

The first part was a familiar recitation of what he thinks his accomplishments were.

The middle was a highly partisan attack on Democrats.

And the end was sort of a return to these unifying themes, the 250th anniversary, war heroes, and America that can do anything it wants to do.

Well, in his telling, America has come back from being basically dead on arrival in the emergency room.

And not surprisingly, Michael, he ran through a number of inflated claims that are pretty familiar to anybody who listens to Donald Trump at rallies or at press conferences.

He talked about how many jobs were created in the private sector without mentioning the fact that Doge cut many in the public sector.

Overall job growth is pretty low.

He talked about winning, particularly winning new investment in the United States.

Well, nothing close to that has come in in the past year.

It looks like he is adding together and maybe inflating commitments that came from different chief executives talking about their investment over the next decade or two.

he made his case that inflation was finally under control.

And that was the closest he got to the affordability argument that we know he hates making because he thinks it's a nonsense argument, but that every one of his aides tells him he's got to address.