“In politics, the truth is whatever you can get away with saying before the fact-checkers finish their coffee.” — No one famous, but someone exhausted

Every president stretches the truth during the State of the Union. That’s a given. It’s basically a constitutional tradition at this point, right up there with the Electoral College and inexplicable Senate holds on perfectly qualified nominees. You expect a little polish on the apple. What you don’t expect is for someone to hand you an onion, paint it gold, call it an apple, claim it’s the greatest apple in the history of apples, and then tell you that apples used to be much worse before he personally invented fruit.

And yet. Tuesday night, February 24, 2026, President Trump delivered a State of the Union that fact-checkers across the political spectrum rated with the enthusiasm of a teacher grading a plagiarized book report. False. Misleading. Exaggerated. Repeat. It wasn’t spin. It was a centrifuge. Let’s go through it, because somebody has to, and I have a law degree and a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance.

The Economy Is Roaring (Like a Golden Retriever Who Thinks He’s a Lion)

Trump opened by saying he inherited a “stagnant” economy now “roaring like never before.” GDP grew 2.2% in 2025. Under Biden, it grew 2.8% in 2024. That’s not a roar. That’s the economy clearing its throat at a slightly lower volume than the previous guy. Calling that a triumph is like a new gym owner pointing to the equipment the previous owner bought and saying, “look at this incredible gym I built.”

Then came the tariff explanation, which Trump has been delivering with the confidence of a man who has never once Googled how tariffs work. Foreign countries pay the tariffs, he says. They do not. American importers pay them and pass the cost to consumers. This is not a liberal talking point. This is Economics 101, chapter one, page one, the first sentence. Saying foreign countries pay tariffs is like saying the restaurant pays for your meal because it’s listed on their menu. Someone is paying. It’s you. It has always been you.

The “largest tax cuts in American history” rank sixth largest by the Tax Foundation. The CBO says most savings flow to the wealthy while low-income families may lose more in benefits than they gain. Sixth place. That’s not a podium finish. That’s a participation ribbon. And the “$18 trillion in investment commitments”? The White House’s own website says $9.6 trillion, mostly pledges, not actual money. He doubled a number that was already fictional. That’s not lying. That is performance art.

Inflation Was the Worst in History (If You Skip All of History)

Trump said he inherited “the worst inflation in U.S. history.” Inflation was 2.9% when Biden left office. The all-time American record is 23.7% — in 1920. The 40-year high of 9.1% hit in mid-2022, during a global post-pandemic supply chain collapse that hit every major economy on Earth. Claiming you inherited the worst inflation in history because inflation peaked during a global crisis and then fell before you arrived is like showing up to a house fire after the firefighters have already left, standing in the wet ash, and telling everyone you’ve never seen such devastating smoke.

On egg prices: Trump said they’re down 60%. They’re down about 48%. On beef: Trump said prices are coming down. Ground beef hit a record high of $6.75 a pound, up roughly 22% year-over-year. Celebrating falling grocery costs while beef is at an all-time high is like announcing you’ve cleaned the house while the kitchen is on fire. Technically selective. Deeply irritating to anyone who has recently tried to make a hamburger.

Zero Illegal Crossings! (Zero Is Not a Number Here, It’s a Mood)

Illegal border crossings are at zero, Trump declared. Here is what is actually true: crossings dropped from approximately 1.5 million in 2024 to roughly 28,000 in 2025. That is a dramatic, real, genuine reduction any honest person would acknowledge as a significant accomplishment. And then Trump looked at that legitimate achievement and decided it wasn’t enough, so he said the number doesn’t exist at all. Twenty-eight thousand is not zero. Zero is zero. This is the kind of thing a child learns at age four and a politician apparently unlearns somewhere between the primary and the inauguration.

And on migrants “pouring in from prisons and mental institutions” causing 11,888 murders: there is no credible evidence millions of migrants were released from foreign prisons. The 13,000-plus convicted murderers without legal status not in ICE custody represent decades of failures across multiple administrations. Attributing all of them to one immigrant wave is like blaming one thunderstorm for every flood that ever happened anywhere. It’s not analysis. It’s a scary story told to people who are already scared, told by someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.

D.C. Crime Is Basically Gone (Nine Homicides Is Basically Gone, Right?)

Trump said there is “almost no crime” in Washington, D.C., and that murders are down “close to 100%.” Since January 1: nine homicides, 126 assaults with dangerous weapons, 322 vehicle thefts. Homicides are actually down 67% — which is genuinely significant and worth celebrating. But 67 is not close to 100 in any mathematical system humans currently use. It’s like a student who failed three out of ten exams telling their parents they got a perfect score. The improvement is real. The framing is delusional. And when you exaggerate a genuine win, you train people to distrust the win.

On energy: Trump says his “drill, baby, drill” policy sparked an oil production boom. The record was a continuation of a four-year trend predating his current term, and production is expected to drop about 100,000 barrels a day in 2026. Taking credit for a trend you inherited while the trend reverses is the political equivalent of boarding a moving train, walking to the front car, and announcing you’re the one making it go.

He Won the 2020 Election (A Sentence That Has Been Wrong Since 2020)

In what has become less a political claim and more a kind of liturgy, Trump again stated he won the 2020 election. Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, and received more than seven million more popular votes. Dozens of legal challenges, including ones filed by Trump’s own attorneys, failed in courts across the country. Recounts confirmed the result. The claim is false. It was false in 2020 and every year since, and it is false now. At some point, repeating a refuted claim this many times stops being a lie and starts being a subscription service.

On campaign promises: Trump declared he has delivered on all of them. PolitiFact finds 19% fulfilled, with many stalled or broken. Nineteen percent. That’s not a delivery record. That’s an Amazon package that says “delivered” but your neighbor got it and keeps forgetting to bring it over. If your contractor finished 19% of your renovation and declared it done, you’d sue. But a president can say it to a joint session of Congress and get a standing ovation.

So What, It’s Just Politics (No. Stop. Sit Down.)

Here’s the thing about governing by fiction that doesn’t get said enough: it’s not just annoying, it’s operationally dangerous. Democracy runs on informed consent. When the official account of national life departs from measurable reality across virtually every category, the feedback loop breaks. It’s like flying a plane with a dashboard where all the instruments have been replaced with motivational posters.

And here’s the genuinely maddening part: there were real achievements in that speech. Border crossings actually dropped. D.C. homicides actually fell. Those things actually happened. But they got buried under an avalanche of exaggeration so thick that even the true parts start to feel suspicious. You’ve poisoned the well and then complained that nobody wants a drink.

The Part Where We Talk About Don Rickles and Andrew Dice Clay

There is a style emerging from this presidency that deserves to be named. The mockery of opponents. The sneering at institutions. The punchlines that land by humiliating someone weaker. The braggadocio that mistakes volume for substance. Don Rickles built a career on insulting everyone in the room, and audiences adored him for it — because they knew it was a bit, because Rickles himself was in on the joke, and because at the end of the night he’d put his arm around the guy he just roasted and buy him a drink. Andrew Dice Clay turned aggression and crudeness into a persona, shocking people into laughter through sheer audacity.

But here is the difference: those were comedians. They were performing. The presidency is not a Vegas residency. It is not a late-night set where the whole point is to see what you can get away with. When the leader of the free world adopts the posture of an insult comic — when governance becomes a series of zingers aimed at the press, immigrants, political opponents, and anyone who dares check a fact — the joke stops being funny, because the stakes are real and the people getting punched are actual human beings with actual lives.

You do not have to agree with the president’s politics. Half the country never does, regardless of who is in office. Policy disagreement is the engine of democracy. But in 2026, after everything this country has been through, we deserve a president who operates with basic decency and dignity — someone who can stand before a joint session of Congress and speak to all of us, not just the people laughing at the same targets. We deserve someone who, when they get a fact wrong, corrects it rather than doubling it. We deserve a president who understands the difference between a microphone and a mirror.

That is not a high bar. It is, in fact, the floor. And right now, we are staring up at it.

— Sources: CNN, NBC News, NPR, ABC News, PolitiFact, Tax Foundation, Bureau of Labor Statistics