Trump Uses Prime-Time Speech To Blame Biden, Immigrants For Economy Woes
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This message comes from Bayer. Science is a rigorous process that requires questions, testing, transparency, and results that can be proven. This approach is integral to every breakthrough Bayer brings forward. Innovations that save lives and feed the world. Science Delivers.com. |
| 0:22.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. |
| 0:24.7 | I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. |
| 0:26.4 | I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. |
| 0:27.4 | I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I'm Democratic-Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. |
| 0:32.0 | And we are recording this podcast at 108 p.m. on Thursday, December 18th, 2025. Today on the show, we are talking about |
| 0:40.5 | President Trump's prime time address to the nation. It was billed as a review of Trump's |
| 0:45.5 | accomplishments during his first year back in office. And here's a taste. Tonight, after 11 months, |
| 0:51.4 | our border is secure. Inflation is stopped. |
| 0:54.8 | Wages are up. |
| 0:56.0 | Prices are down. |
| 0:57.3 | Our nation is strong. |
| 0:58.8 | America is respected, and our country is back stronger than ever before. |
| 1:05.9 | We're poised for an economic boom, the likes of which the world has never seen. |
| 1:10.1 | So many Trump trademarks in there. Danielle, what did you make of this speech? |
| 1:15.1 | Well, Trump is just flat out not feeling people's pain. Now, he's not a guy known for being |
| 1:20.3 | super fuzzy and empathetic. I get it. But right now, as we have talked about just recently on |
| 1:25.7 | this podcast, this is a White House that is trying to refocus on an economic message as Americans are really feeling squeezed economically. You have consumer confidence down. You have Americans saying they don't love how Trump is handling the economy. And yet, instead of coming out and trying to say something new or reassuring, what you got was you got Trump yelling at you. And not only that, but yelling a rally speech, essentially. This was kind of a hodgepodge of the greatest hits from Trump. It was a lot of blaming Joe Biden, insisting that his own administration is the |
| 2:02.7 | greatest ever super successful. So there just wasn't any, hey, I hear you. Domenico, what jumped out |
| 2:09.5 | of you? Well, I mean, considering, you know, what our latest NPR PBS News Marist poll found, |
| 2:15.4 | you know, with him only at 36% approval rating on his handling |
| 2:18.6 | of the economy, what we've seen all year with people saying that the economy is their top |
... |
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