Hi there, everybody.

It's four o'clock in New York.

It's desperate times, desperate measures

for an increasingly desperate president

in a primetime address last night bearing the tone,

tenor, and volume of a person shouting into a bullhorn

on a street corner. Donald Trump all but told

the American people to pipe down and listen to how good they've got it under Donald Trump.

He had everything we've come to expect from any one of his campaign rallies, overstatements,

understatements, mathematical impossibilities, deep-seated grievances, and through it all, lies,

lies, and more outrageous lies. Entirely absent, in contrast, were the words Medicare, Medicaid,

guns, debt, climate, Venezuela, bipartisanship, healing, uniting. In fact, Trump's tirade

was nearly indistinguishable from what you might find on his

true social feed. It lacked any major policy announcement other than distribution of so-called

warrior dividends. It's something defense won today identifies as a bit of a rebrand for a troop housing

subsidy already approved by Congress. And Trump said

he'd pay for those bonuses with revenue raised from tariffs. The fate of tariffs is currently

before the United States Supreme Court. A friend of this program, Tom Nichols, in the Atlantic

today, writes that the announcement of that bonus was a low character

attempt to buy the loyalty of our beloved men and women in the armed forces. Quote, we could take

apart Trump's fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days, but perhaps more

important than false statements, which for Trump, are part for the course, was his demeanor.

...