It is a sad day indeed when a tax-evading convicted criminal, who stole money from his own charity and has enriched himself to the tune of an extra $3 billion since re-entering the White House, is trusted to speak the truth about the state of the union. According to Forbes, in a piece written by Dan Alexander on September 9th 2025:
Donald Trump just had the most lucrative year of his life. The president is now worth a record $7.3 billion, up from $4.3 billion in 2024, when he was still running for office. The $3 billion gain vaulted him 118 spots on The Forbes 400, where he lands at No. 201 this year.
No president in U.S. history has used his position of power to profit as immensely as Trump. His primary vehicle for enrichment: cryptocurrency, an asset class full of hype and vulnerable to regulators. Teaming up with his three sons, Trump announced a crypto venture in September 2024 named World Liberty Financial, which initially struggled to gain traction. Then he won the White House.
He’s right when he says wages went up, but as ever, he was focused on himself. We will never know how much tax he will pay on the $3 billion because the rules don’t apply to him. In any event, his obscene wealth growth obtained by exploiting the office of the presidency, will be well sheltered against the level of tax the average American will pay for the same period.
Trump’s claim that the upcoming average tax refund will increase by $1000 for 2025 is yet another false promise. As reported by The Center for American Progress on February 23rd 2026:
The White House and congressional Republicans’ own data show that the average 2025 tax refund will increase by much less than $1,000, with most Americans earning less than $100,000 in income seeing no increase.
The report continues:
Fewer than half of American taxpayers making less than $100,000 will receive an increased tax refund this year, and their refund check will only be $208 larger than previously. Meanwhile, nearly all Americans making more than $200,000 will see an increased refund, and theirs will average over $2,000 more than last year.
Trump’s entire economic strategy is designed to crush social mobility and serve the few and not the many. Between 82% and 84% of Americans earn below $100,000. Only 14% - 16% of Americans earn 200,000 per year, so any claim that Trump is governing for all Americans is, as we know, a lie.
When the regime claims consumer spending is strong, it can do so because 49% of that spending is being done by the top 10%. The whole premise of Trump’s economic strategy is based on having to govern for only 13 to 15 million people, and if he’s honest, even that’s too many, because he’s really only interested in the top 1%, which is between 1.3 and 1.5 million Americans. The only reason the stock market is booming is because the tech Barrons are operating a Ponzi scheme to create an illusion of success while they concentrate on chasing some ACTUAL success.
While around 60% of US households have exposure to the stock market through mutual funds and 401(k)s, 80% of private stock ownership is held by households earning $100,000 or more. It’s absolutely true to say Wall Street is not Main Street. Now we can argue all day about the misconception that it’s never been easier to live the American dream. This is the carrot often dangled in front of those at the bottom, claiming it’s all about how hard you work. The harsh reality, however, is that if you are in the bottom 20%, there is a strong possibility that’s where you’ll stay. If you’re in the bottom 50%, your chances aren’t that much better either. There are, of course, always exceptions.
It would be true to say that those whose net worth is now over $1 million (about 22 million households) are largely attributed to rising property values. We live in a distorted reality where what might be perceived as high net worth is, for some, an illusion. With this in mind, it’s not difficult to understand how people buy into Trump’s fantasy wealth narrative. 10% of those with investable assets between $1 million and $10 million still report living paycheck to paycheck. Indeed, among Americans earning $300,000 a year, up to 40% of them report living paycheck to paycheck.
This is a human flaw rather than an economic problem; it’s about people not being able to help themselves, living beyond their means. It's a byproduct of living in a rampant capitalist consumer economy. This societal mindset provides fertile ground for electing people like Trump. In a dog-eat-dog world, we are prepared to step on anyone to get ahead. It’s estimated that the bar for truly independent high-end financial independence in the US is between $ 5 million and $10 million. If we have reached a point where people earning $300,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck, the top 1% has truly got the country by the balls.
The point I am trying to make here is that, over the years, Republicans have governed for fewer and fewer people, in direct correlation to the wealth gap. The challenge to remain above what is regarded as ‘unworthy’ keeps rising as the systematic transfer of wealth relentlessly shifts to the top. This means that those not breathing the rarified air at the top of the economic food chain hold less and less value.
As a species, we are highly susceptible to suggestion because our brains are built to use repetitive patterns as a sort of mental muscle memory. To work more efficiently, our brain stores familiar knowledge, reducing the need to process every experience in real time. This means that we tend to trust repeated patterns or statements; propaganda relies on repeating the lie over and over, so that it eventually overrides real-time processing (critical thinking) and is accepted as the truth. This is how Trump has been so successful at getting people not to believe their own eyes. The power of suggestion, through repeated lies, can even convince people to discard what they saw because the brain seeks comfort in the pre-stored lie.
What Trump did to great effect yesterday was use real numbers stemming from the economic carnage he himself left behind in his first term. He reimagined the time when Biden began guiding the US back to what economists worldwide recognised as the fastest post-pandemic recovery among developed economies. Disregarding the truth, Trump used inflation and economic numbers resulting from his own mismanagement of the economy as Biden’s numbers. He was effectively measuring his current performance against the final year of his failed first term.
Just for context, here is the truth of what he actually inherited:
Consistent GDP growth of 12.6% over the Biden-Harris term, which outperformed ALL other G7 nations. (Be mindful that this was from a no-growth starting point.)
Biden added 14.5 million jobs (accounting for BLS downward revisions), which was more than any other four-year presidential term in history. (Again, it is argued that a large number of these were recovered jobs as the economy began to recover. It is important to note, however, that all pre-pandemic jobs had been recovered by June 2022, and the administration added around 5.5 million jobs after accounting for BLS downward revisions.
Unemployment when Biden left office was 4.1% lower than Trump’s current 4.3%
US productivity was described by global economists as world-beating compared to global competitors.
US inflation under Biden was 2.9% for the 12 months ending December 2024 and remained the same until the day he left office.
These are the FACTS about what Trump inherited, and all of the above were achieved without Biden handing a cent to the rich, or increasing taxes on imported goods for Americans, while attempting to disguise them as a tariff paid by foreign countries. Trump also inherited a US global reputation enhanced by Biden’s success in bringing NATO together to confront Russia's threat in Ukraine.
All he had to do was stamp his brand on Biden’s achievements, take credit for them, and carry on. Instead, he decided to reimagine America for the top 1% and take a flamethrower to the government while tearing down regulatory protections for the environment and American citizens. He decided to throw away $96 billion a year in taxes raised on undocumented workers and instead spend almost double that on a highly expensive, performative mass deportation program. Yet he’s trying to tell everyone he’s built the greatest economy ever, while carrying almost $39 trillion of debt, set to get worse as a result of the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs.
Trump spoke of none of this in his address to the nation; instead, he rolled out his greatest hits in a 107-minute self-congratulatory litany of lies, disinformation and misdirection. There is no shortage of fact-checking around his performance. You can read CNN’s version, or if you prefer, the New York Times version (this is not paywalled)
I could write a book about what was wrong with his bedtime story, not least that, if it takes almost 2 hours to convince people not to believe their eyes and their bank accounts, questions have to be asked. It’s no secret what I think about Trump, but he does know how to perform for the camera because he lives his life inside a fantasy adversarial world, untouched by the pain so many Americans are feeling right now. What he did was use long-established propaganda points that are almost like sleeper-cell triggers to activate the lies he told. These pre-programmed propaganda talking points are activated and perceived as the truth. He’s a master at it. His base becomes captivated, while his sceptics remain non-believers, and therein, my friends, lies the problem.
MAGA have created an environment in which it’s all but impossible to drown out the lies with the truth, and that’s a massive problem, especially when Trump is holding corporate and social media hostage. He needs division for his strategy to work; that’s why Republicans spend so much time promoting it. Those of us who have been around the block a few times understand that going after Republican voters along political lines is a hard slog and almost impossible when it comes to hard-core MAGA supporters.
What Trumpism has successfully achieved is to set the stage for political tribal warfare, nothing that the other side says will even be heard because polarisation has deemed that you are a traitor if you believe anything the opposition says. As a result, breaking through that iron barrier requires real out-of-the-box thinking. Americans, on the whole, simply do not trust politicians, and they have every reason to have arrived at that conclusion.
In the next post, we’ll delve into how to remove the iron divide by simply turning down the politics to allow common sense and the truth to resonate better.
You can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
What you have written is a great summary of the truth. Well done.