President Trump announced on Tuesday that he would be giving an address on Wednesday evening from the White House. Immediately, certain people started jumping to conclusions.

The rumor that President Trump was going to announce an imminent war with Venezuela flew like wildfire around the internet, fanned by none other than Tucker Carlson. Well, perhaps the White House should send Tucker some crow for his Christmas meal, because that is most certainly not what Trump’s speech was about.

Instead, the president took the opportunity to deliver an end-of-year address that was partly a mini State of the Union, and partly a Christmas letter update telling anyone reading it about all the accomplishments of the family administration since Inauguration Day in January. When you think of the speech in those terms, the fact that President Trump kept it to under twenty minutes seems nothing less than a Christmas miracle.

Before we get to the substance of the address, let me first just say that the Christmas trees, garland over the fireplace, and George Washington’s portrait made for an excellent backdrop. High marks for the staging for this speech. However, the speech itself was simply a report card, with President Trump giving himself his own grades. There were a few high points, but most of the speech was extremely predictable – right down to Trump getting to use his favorite charts. The opening of the speech cut straight to the point.

“Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it,” Trump declared on Wednesday night in a year-end recap beamed live into millions of homes.

“Over the past 11 months, we have brought more positive change to Washington than any administration in American history,” Trump declared, focusing heavily on Americans’ economic concerns.

Trump whipped out a chart to show price decreases and wage increases under his watch — with real private-sector wage growth averaging $1,048 since he returned to the White House, versus losses of $2,919 under Joe Biden.

“Let’s look at the facts. Under the Biden administration, car prices rose 22% and in many states 30% or more,” Trump said, ticking through data displayed on other charts.

“Democrat politicians also set the cost of groceries. Sorry, but we are solving that too.”

Trump also talked about cost of healthcare thanks to Obamacare – and stuck it directly on Democrats.

During the national address, Trump sought to flip Democrats’ script on affordability, pinning the blame on Democrats for rising health insurance costs.

“The current Unaffordable Care Act was created to make insurance companies rich,” Trump chided. “You see that now in the steep increase in premiums being demanded by the Democrats and they are demanding those increases and it’s their fault.

“It is not the Republicans’ fault, it’s the Democrats’ fault, it’s the Unaffordable Care Act.”

Preisdent Trump is correct that the Democrats are responsible for the expiring subsidies via the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” – which was passed through Congress on a party-line vote while Democrats were in the majority, and signed into law by Joe Biden – but that will not help Republicans in the 2026 midterms. The House of Representatives has now passed a healthcare reform bill that will make some moderate improvements, but the subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year without any additional Congressional extensions.

The one item that was unexpected was the annoucement of a “warrior dividend” check for every currently serving military member.

“Military service members will receive a special … warrior dividend before Christmas,” Trump announced during his address to the nation on Wednesday night. “A warrior dividend in honor of our nation’s founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier $1,776.”

“And the checks are already on the way.”

Trump implied that the bonus checks were funded by his sweeping tariffs, many of which could be quashed by the Supreme Court after it signaled skepticism last month about his legal justification for many of those duties.

“We made a lot more money than anybody thought because of tariffs,” he added. “Nobody deserves it more than our military, and I say congratulations to everybody.”

Now, this move is both politically savvy, and politically bulletproof. President Trump loves his tariffs – he called it his “favorite word” during the speech – but there is every indication that the Supreme Court will likely rule against his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose those tariffs. If that happens, there are a lot of questions about what happens to the tariff money that was already collected, and who would be entitled to rebates. By using tariff money to hand out these “warrior dividends” to active servicemembers, the money goes back to a group that is almost always supported by both sides of the political aisle, and those funds become politically impossible to claw back. It’s a clever way to get around returning all of the collected tariffs – the estimated cost of the “warrior dividend” check would be something around $2.6 billion, and the Trump administration claims that it has taken in about $200 billion in tariff revenue.

But aside from that single announcement, the entire speech was pretty boilerplate Trump. Massive amounts of hyperbole, very pointed insults, and one interesting piece of news.

That Presidential Address could have been a Truth Social post

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) December 18, 2025

That could have been an email

— CountryTrumpkin (@Grumpy_Buster) December 18, 2025

That was the annual Trump administration Christmas card letter. Hope everyone enjoyed it – and sorry, no war in Venezuela.

Featured image: President Donald Trump on December 1, 2025, official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian, cropped, public domain