1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

The idea behind a year-end presidential address isn’t necessarily unreasonable. In late December, it stands to reason that White House officials would take a moment to pause, reflect and take stock of the year that was, giving the public an assessment of their performance. That is, in theory. In practice, Donald Trump’s year-end prime-time address presented the American public with 18 minutes of combative presidential blame-shifting and excuse-making, packaged in the unsubtle desperation of a man who doesn’t seem to understand why so much of the public doesn’t appreciate his systemic failures and embarrassments. But above all, the Republican president did what he always does: He lied uncontrollably. In fact, his speech was so littered with brazen falsehoods that it was rather easy to come up with a top 10 list. #10: “Already, I’ve secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States.” It’d be great if that were true, but it’s not. #9: “Our country was being invaded by an army of 25 million people.” That total wasn’t even close to being true. #8: “I was elected in a landslide.” No, he wasn’t. #7: “The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33% compared to the Biden last year.” Is he still peddling this nonsense? Evidently, yes, though it’s still not true. #6: Trump said the Republicans' “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed this year included, among other things, “no tax on Social Security.” That might sound nice, but that wasn’t actually a part of the far-right package. #5: “When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country.” Trump says this all the time, but it’s demonstrably false. #4: “I’ve … settled eight wars in 10 months.” I get the sense that he’s convinced himself that this happened, but it hasn’t, no matter how many times he repeats the line. #3: “Gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon into much of the country. In some states, it, by the way, just hit $1.99 a gallon.” This is a weird thing to lie about, since consumers know better, but for the record, this obviously wasn’t true. #2: “The price of eggs is down 82% since March, and everything else is falling rapidly.” The president would very likely be more popular if this were true, but it’s not. #1: “I negotiated directly with the drug companies and foreign nations, which were taking advantage of our country for many decades, to slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals by as much as 400%, 500% and even 600%.” This whopper claimed the top spot for me, because on top of the absurdity of the lie, one has to layer the fact this guy still doesn’t understand how numbers work.