Last week in rural Pennsylvania, Donald Trump gave what his team called a “Christmas speech.” He opened by wishing everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, adding “all of that stuff,” and then bragged that under his presidency people were finally allowed to say “Merry Christmas” again, as if it had ever disappeared.
He then told the crowd that he had delivered lower prices and bigger paychecks for them. This claim didn’t match what most people there, or across the country, are actually experiencing. Many families are still struggling with high food prices, rent, fuel, and everyday bills. Trump brushed that reality aside and suggested that if people are finding life too expensive, the problem is simply that they buy too much.
He said people could just give up certain things. He used strange examples, saying children don’t need dozens of pencils because one or two is enough, and that daughters don’t need dozens of dolls because two or three should be fine. The message was clear: if you’re struggling, it’s your fault for buying too much, not because the cost of living is crushing.
That advice sounds especially hollow coming from Trump. While telling ordinary people to cut back, he continues to benefit from enormous personal wealth. He has made billions from crypto ventures and has accepted lavish gifts and favors, including a luxury jet from Qatar, gold from powerful corporations and foreign governments, expensive watches, and countless other perks. It’s hard to take lectures about sacrifice seriously from someone who lives in extreme luxury.
Trump then claimed that things are actually going great because the stock market and retirement accounts are going up. What he failed to mention is that the vast majority of the stock market is owned by the richest Americans. Around 92 percent of it belongs to the top 10 percent. Most Americans don’t own stocks at all, and only about a third even have a retirement account like a 401(k). For millions of people, stock market gains mean absolutely nothing in their daily lives.
The speech was supposed to focus on affordability, but Trump showed little interest in understanding the stress people feel about rent, groceries, childcare, and medical bills. Instead of showing empathy, he drifted into his usual attacks. He went after Representative Ilhan Omar, mocked renewable energy, ridiculed transgender people, and insulted President Joe Biden. The people struggling to pay their bills got no real answers, only distractions and insults.
It’s no surprise that many voters are growing tired of him. Even some of his most loyal supporters are beginning to hesitate. This week in Miami, voters elected a Democratic mayor for the first time in nearly 30 years, soundly rejecting the Republican candidate Trump endorsed. The Democrat won by a large margin, and the new mayor said Miami sits right at the center of America’s affordability crisis, where rising costs are impossible to ignore.
In Indiana, Trump tried to force Republican senators to accept a redistricting plan he wanted. He threatened to back primary challengers against those who resisted and encouraged his supporters to pressure them. Some lawmakers even faced fake emergency calls to their homes and death threats. Despite all of this, it didn’t work. Twenty-one Republican senators joined all the Democrats to vote the plan down.
Signs of Trump’s weakening influence are showing up everywhere. More Republican lawmakers are distancing themselves as they realize he no longer has the power he once did to help or hurt them in upcoming elections. They’ve refused his demand to kill the filibuster, pushed back on his vague healthcare ideas, forced him to release the Epstein files, rejected his strange proposal for $2,000 tariff checks, demanded more oversight of his military actions abroad, and openly rebelled against his handpicked House speaker.
Trump may not be able to ruin Christmas, but it’s starting to look like the season of reckoning might be catching up with him. The louder he talks, the more people seem to be seeing through the performance.
