Many times over the past decade, Donald Trump’s public speeches have reminded me of the old TV ads of the Crazy Eddie electronics series I used to watch as a kid in suburban New Jersey — the surprise delivery service, the breathless noise, the absurd, unforgettable slogans. (“His prices are amazing!”) But somehow this was never the case as on Wednesday night, when the president spoke to the nation from the White House Diplomatic Reception Room, surrounded by the soft glow of two Christmas trees and a portrait of George Washington.
The comparison isn’t exact, to be fair. Legendary Crazy Eddie player Jerry Carroll dressed as Santa Claus in the chain’s famous holiday ads, which Crazy Eddie supposedly paid for. In return, Trump received free airtime from all major television networks in America for his Christmas commercial, which was presented as an eighteen-minute-thirty-three-second sentence. There are a huge number of words that can be strung together without a lot of periods or common sense, although we all know by now that there is only one form of punctuation that Trump has truly embraced: the exclamation mark. “I’m lowering these high prices and lowering them very quickly!” It was announced Wednesday night. “Boy, are we making progress!” “There’s never been anything like it!”
The centerpiece of the president’s speech was his announcement of an unconditional deal for 1.4 million U.S. military personnel to receive year-end bonuses of $1,776 each, in honor of next year’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He said, “The checks are already on the way!” Santa Trump has promised more financial gifts in the new year: a great new housing policy, a great new health care plan. As the President said: “You people will get great health care for less!” I, personally, can’t wait, having recently received a reimbursement check for three and eighty-six cents from our health insurance company for my son’s annual checkup worth over a thousand dollars.
If only Trump were actually selling discounted electronics. Suffice it to say, there have been no examples of Crazy Eddie trying to sell new color TVs by claiming that Somali immigrants stole the old ones. When Defense One revealed overnight that money for Trump’s so-called veterans’ dividends was diverted from a $2.9 billion fund for military housing allowances created by Congress, it was less surprising than expected. Santa has to get money for all those gifts from somewhere, right?
But as a year-end announcement of Trump’s accomplishments, the speech had a whiff of desperation about it. Could it be that the presidential huckster, whose popularity declined in the 1930s, secretly knows that America isn’t buying what he’s selling? Why else was he speaking so quickly? Just hours before the speech, even a few Republicans on Capitol Hill began to rebel, demanding a vote to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are about to expire, which would push health care prices sky-high for millions of people. In his speech, Trump made no mention of this, instead placing the blame for the upcoming price increases on Democrats, even though they have spent the past few months fighting Trump to prevent them. It seems like this level of illumination can take a lot from a man. When his speech ended, according to the White House report, Trump turned to the press and said: “Do you think this is easy?” Then take a large dose of Diet Coke. The feeling that he was carrying out these suggestions was only reinforced by what happened next: “Susie told me that I should make an address to the nation,” or something very close to it, according to the council report.
Susie, of course, is Susie Wells, Trump’s chief of staff, and part of Trump’s comment was no doubt to remind reporters that she’s still calling the shots in the White House. Wiles, who is notoriously low-profile, found herself facing a rare bout of bad publicity this week, when her scathing comments about the president and much of his inner circle were published by author Chris Whipple, in eleven interviews recorded over the past year, in Vanity gallery.
Among the selected pieces: Wiles said that Trump, like her father, the late football commentator Pat Summerall, “has an alcoholic personality,” that Vice President J.D. Vance has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade,” and that Elon Musk has been microdosing on drugs and is a “freakish person.” She’s also revealed herself to be a skeptic when it comes to many of the most famous atrocities committed after Trump returned to office, questioning everything from Musk’s destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development — “no reasonable person,” Loibl said — could countenance how the matter was handled — to the presidential pardon of the violent pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.