This is a brilliant (a word I use sparingly) Facebook post by Michael Jochum. Below are two versions of a song I created, Prime Time Panic, based on the essay.
Donald Trump hijacked prime time for twenty minutes and delivered absolutely nothing, no plan, no facts, no leadership, just a familiar slurry of lies, grievance, xenophobia, and self-pity. A bloated blame game so empty it interrupted the Survivor finale and somehow managed to be less coherent than the show it displaced.
This was not an “Address to the Nation.” It was a rerun. Truth Social dressed up with studio lighting.
He lied compulsively. He rambled incoherently. He shouted like a late-night infomercial that jolts you awake at 2 a.m., volume cranked to panic. He blamed Joe Biden for everything short of gravity, recycled rally insults verbatim, and padded the dead air with Borscht Belt comic asides while struggling to stay married to the teleprompter. The sniffing, the slurring, the lost place, it wasn’t commanding. It was deteriorating.
And then came the ugliness. He punched down at immigrants, smeared Somalis, and once again used entire communities as rhetorical chew toys, not because it solves anything, but because cruelty is his only reliable applause line. This is what passes for “strength” in Trumpworld: scapegoating the vulnerable while offering nothing to the people actually watching their grocery bills rise and their credit card debt balloon just to survive the holidays.
He claimed drug prices are down “600 percent.” That’s not a policy, it’s a math hallucination. By that logic, pharmaceutical companies would be paying patients to take medication. This is the level of intellectual seriousness we’re dealing with.
Healthcare? He says it’s “better.” How? Silence. Inflation? “Down.” For whom? Not anyone who’s been to a grocery store this week. The entire speech could be summarized as: Democrats bad, I’m amazing, trust me, Merry Christmas. That’s it. Twenty minutes of noise, zero substance.
The networks should be ashamed for carrying it live. There was no public interest served here, only ego maintenance. This wasn’t leadership; it was a man desperately trying to remind the country that he still exists while polls correctly place him in the “sinking fast” category. What we witnessed wasn’t confidence. It was panic.
And yet, millions watched and nodded along.
That’s the most disturbing part.
There are millions of Americans who no longer respond to facts, coherence, or reality itself. They follow Trump the way cult members follow a leader who’s always wrong but never questioned. It doesn’t matter how incoherent he sounds, how naked the lies are, or how openly he traffics in resentment and hate. They worship the performance. They defend the degradation. They mistake volume for truth and cruelty for authenticity.
This wasn’t a speech. It was a stress test, and a depressing number of people failed it.
Trump didn’t look strong. He looked scared. He didn’t sound presidential. He sounded unhinged. And if, after that manic, turbocharged narcissistic rant, you still think this man represents stability, intelligence, or leadership, then the problem isn’t politics. It’s judgment.
The real question now isn’t why Trump melted down on national television.
It’s how bad tomorrow’s Epstein file revelations are going to be.
Because nothing screams “nothing to hide” like hijacking prime time to scream at the country and blame everyone else.
This wasn’t an address.
It was a warning.
-Michael Jochum, author of Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition
I created two versions of a song based on this essay, entitled Prime Time Panic.
Verse 1
Hijacked the evening, stole the screen. 20 minutes, nothing clean. No plan, no facts, just recycled fear. A rerun dressed as truth this year, Truth Social in a borrowed suit. Static noise, absolute. Interrupt the finale, kill the light. Say less than fiction on a scripted night
Pre-Chorus
Shouting like a 2 a.m. sale Buy this lie or watch it fail Lost the place, missed the line Volume up, decay in time
Chorus
This isn’t strength, it’s panic loud. A bloated king with no real crown mistakes the roar for something true. Feeds on hate ‘cause it still chews. No vision, no hand on the wheel. Just noise pretending to be real. This wasn’t leadership on display. It was fear screaming in prime time gray
Verse 2
Blame gravity on Biden’s name Same old insults, same old game Sniff, slur, stumble, punch below Cruelty’s the only trick he knows Turn whole lives into punchline bait Scapegoats served on a silver plate While grocery bills climb through the roof And survival itself needs proof Pre-Chorus Six hundred percent, numbers bend Math dies just to serve the end Healthcare “better,” silence speaks Inflation “down” — for who this week?
Chorus
This isn’t strength, it’s panic loud. A bloated king with no real crown mistakes the roar for something true. Feeds on hate ‘cause it still chew.s No vision, no hand on the wheel. Just noise pretending to be real. This wasn’t leadership on display. It was fear screaming in prime time gray
Bridge
Networks aired it, shame intact. No public good, just ego tax. Millions watched and nodded yes. That’s the part that chills the chest. Facts don’t land, coherence dies. Volume wins, cruelty qualifies. A cult of sound, a faith in rage. Applause for rot, decay as a stage
Breakdown
This wasn’t a speech. It was a test, and too many failed, Mistook screaming for truth, and fear for power
Final Chorus
He didn’t look strong; he looked afraid. Didn’t sound presidential, just unhinged and frayed. If this is stability, if this is “fine.” Then judgment’s the crime, not party lines. So ask the question, don’t look away. Why hijack the night if you’re clean today? Nothing to hide doesn’t shout this hard. This wasn’t an address
Outro
It was a warning. Sirens don’t whisper. They scream.
Version 1
Version 2
An International Educator in Vietnam 
Here’s Paul Krugman’s reaction to Dear Leader’s “speech”:
Lies, Damned Lies and Trump SpeechesWhat MAGA genius thought that Trump’s “affordability” speech was a good idea?
Paul Krugman
Dec 19READ IN APP
Source
Today is a travel day so this will be a short post. Fortunately the main topic that I want to talk about is uncomplicated – the speech that Donald Trump gave on Wednesday night. The purpose of the speech was to turn around Trump’s cratering public approval on his handling of the economy. I will also address a slightly more complicated topic: health insurance and the complete inability of Trump and Republicans in general to address public concerns about healthcare affordability.
To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, Trump’s speech was nasty, brutish, but, mercifully, short. Apparently it was short because the networks told him that they would only give him 15 minutes (although they didn’t cut away when he went over). It was a blizzard of lies. I can’t find a single factual assertion Trump made that was true.
So many lies, so little time, as well as reader patience. However, the major media organizations are doing a decent job of fact-checking, so I won’t inflict upon you another laundry list of his mendacities.
Yet one hallucination I will highlight — in this case I say “hallucination” rather than lie because Trump, surrounded by sycophants, may actually believe it — is his persistent claim that the world despised the US economy a year ago and now admires his achievements. From the speech:
What was the world actually saying about America a year ago? From The Economist, in October 2024:
Furthermore, truth wasn’t the only thing completely lacking in Trump’s diatribe. Also lacking was anything resembling an actual policy to deal with concerns about affordability.
It was notable that while making the false claim that overall prices are coming down, the specific prices Trump highlighted (with fake numbers) were turkeys, eggs and gasoline — all prices over which policy has very little influence. Egg prices, for example, fluctuate wildly over time, not because of anything the government does, but because of the vagaries of bird flu. And, by the way, the Trump Administration has shut down a research project that was developing a bird flu vaccine.
Healthcare, by contrast, is an area where policy has a huge effect on affordability. It’s also an area in which Trump talked utter nonsense.
Here’s what you should know: The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, offers Americans who aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or through their employers the ability to purchase insurance coverage from private insurers, with the federal government subsidizing most enrollees’ premiums. However, enhanced subsidies put in place under the Biden administration will expire on January 1st, 2026, leading to large cost increases for many families.
Costs will soar for two reasons. There’s the direct effect of losing subsidies. But there’s also an indirect effect, because the loss of subsidies will lead millions of people to drop their coverage — and those who drop coverage will, on average, be healthier than those who don’t, worsening the risk pool. Insurers, anticipating this effect, have already sharply raised premiums.
Charts from KFF show the effects on some representative couples. More than 20 million would be affected, but the worst hit will be older, moderately well-off Americans who are earning just a bit too much to remain eligible for subsidies. For example, a 60-year-old couple with an income of $85,000 will face a premium hike equal to more than a quarter of their pre-tax income:
Source: KFF
What should the Trump Administration do? Here’s Trump:
So Trump says that he’ll replace the current system, in which people buy their own health insurance with the aid of government subsidies, with a system in which the government gives people money they can use to buy their own health insurance. How is that different?
In fact, it isn’t different except for one devastating detail: Republicans in Congress will never approve subsidies adequate to make health insurance affordable. Because the Republican plan would be far stingier than the one currently in place, millions of people will be forced to drop their insurance. And as I said, because it’s the younger and relatively more healthy that will drop their coverage, the pool of those who keep their coverage will be older and sicker. And you know what happens next – premiums go up even further. No wonder that four Republican congressmen in purple districts defied Mike Johnson and voted to extend the Obamacare subsidies.
So what should we make of Trump’s speech? Many commentators are describing it as a nothingburger, because it’s unlikely to do anything to move the political needle. (PS: The price of nothingburgers has risen 18 percent since Trump took office.)
Let me say something about the latest report on consumer prices, which showed lower inflation than expected. The general view among economists I follow is that this report was seriously distorted by the effects of the government shutdown, although we don’t know by how much. For now, the best guess is that troubling inflation, and with it public concern about affordability, will persist.
But leaving the short-run politics aside, the speech revealed something important: Namely, Trump has no idea how to govern. Faced with adversity, he’s unable to propose policies to improve the situation. All he can do iscontinue to gaslight the public and claim that everything is great, while smearing his opponents.
That was a short speech, but it presages a very long next three years for ordinary Americans. And for congressional Republicans, it presages a very ugly November 2026.