"They are sick individuals" - Trump’s newest speech is insane

Donald Trump stood in a Georgia school gymnasium to promote Trump Accounts, but the real story was not the program he barely mentioned for nearly 25 minutes. It was the spectacle he created while something far more consequential was happening off camera: a thirty-year nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that weakens safeguards, opens the door to uranium enrichment, and risks changing the balance of power across the Middle East. The rally was noise. The nuclear deal was the warning.

Based on the events of 7-22-2026

The Breakdown:

* Trump appeared at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, for an event meant to celebrate Trump Accounts, but quickly turned it into a grievance-filled rally.

* He attacked the press as "sick individuals" and "fake news" before turning to fear-based claims about communists, monuments, and Democrats.

* Trump took nearly 25 minutes to mention the Trump Accounts program, calling it part of the "great big beautiful bill" and saying it was "hot as a pistol."

* His speech recycled claims about inflation, borders, crime, transgender people, and global humiliation to create a sense of crisis around himself.

* After attending the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base for four service members killed in the conflict with Iran, Trump described parts of their service records as having "a couple of little bad things put in."

* He also called Dover "an incredible place," language that sounded painfully disconnected from the solemn purpose of receiving fallen service members.

* Trump claimed his administration had secured more than $19.2 trillion in new investment, then veered into an unexplained claim about "some guy from the street" stealing $100 million.

* He praised the Front Row Joes and traveling supporters, treating the official event like a concert built around personal loyalty.

* Trump repeated his 401k stories, claiming people feel like Warren Buffett and that marriages are improving because of his stock market claims.

* He tried to dismiss affordability as a word "made up by the Democrats," even while acknowledging Americans are paying more.

* He claimed families were getting back "thousands and thousands of dollars," even though Americans can see the reality in grocery bills and bank balances.

* Trump described a White House ballroom as a "military facility" with a drone port, revealing more about the East Wing project than the public had been told.

* He used an official presidential event to tell people to buy Dell computers after praising a donor's company.

* While bringing a family with children on stage, he joked about not falling "like sleepy Joe," turning even that moment into an attack.

* Trump said communism was a greater threat than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11, while repeatedly tying Democrats to communism.

* That framing casts political opponents as existential enemies and makes extreme action feel justified to people who believe him.

* While the rally dominated attention, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed a thirty-year nuclear cooperation agreement.

* The agreement gives American companies priority access to build Saudi Arabia's civilian nuclear program and creates a pathway for uranium enrichment.

* Saudi Arabia refused the "gold standard" accepted by the UAE in 2009, including no enrichment, no reprocessing, and stronger IAEA inspections.

* Trump signed a national security waiver because Saudi Arabia would not accept those safeguards, choosing the deal over the protections.

This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I'm Heather Tlaney Reese, and you're listening to Hope for America, where every day I bring you the truth about our politics, our country, and the forces trying to destroy them. Together, we cut through the noise, expose the lies, and stay focused on what really matters, fighting for the survival of our country. At 3:33 p.m., Donald Trump walked across the temporary stage to the school gymnasium at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, as his theme song, God Bless the USA, blasted over the loudspeakers. He took just a few steps at a time, stopping to catch his breath, clap his hands, and point at people in the audience. Although his eyes were swollen and he struggled to keep them open, he was remarkably energized and had a lot to say. He jumped right in by lashing out at the press, saying they are sick individuals, they are the fake news. Later he stoked fear by claiming that communists are trying to blow up national monuments, saying that they try taking Mount Rushmore down. They want to blow it up. While insisting Democrats are the communists, he is warning about, and that communism is the single greatest threat to our country in history. Even more so than the greatest attacks and tragedies our country has ever faced. He was there to celebrate and promote Trump accounts. You know the ones where babies get seedling accounts. Instead, he turned the event into a Trump appreciation rally, taking nearly 25 minutes to even mention what he was there to celebrate. The great big beautiful bill that we're celebrating today, it's something that's beautiful. It's beautiful because it takes care of our youth. It's called the Trump accounts. And it's hot as a pistol. It's hot as a pistol. Over the total 77 minutes, the author of The Art of the Deal put on a masterclass in distraction. He wasn't interested in facts or truth. He was interested in spectacle, absurdity, and chaos. His objective was simple: be loud enough that everyone focused on him, whether in agreement or disgust, instead of looking at what was happening off camera. His opening also included attacking the last administration, setting the tone for the entire afternoon. Sleepy Joe Biden and the radical left Democrats, they're Democrats. Dumb Democrats created the worst inflation in 48 years. Within minutes, he launched into a tirade so packed full of unverifiable claims that it was nearly impossible to pick which one was the worst. Wide open borders with millions of people, even from the world's worst prisons from all over the world, they were pouring into our country all over the globe. They came, prisons and gang members, drug dealers, child predators, and 11,888 murderers, many of whom committed more than one murder. More than 50% committed more than one murder. We had transgender for everybody. Men and women, sports came ravaging through our cities, and the whole world was laughing at us. These were just more recycled old talking points designed to make us feel like the world was on fire and that he is the only one who can save us. Then came maybe one of the most disappointing moments, especially coming from the president of the United States. That word doesn't do it justice. Having just come from Dover Air Force Base, after attending the dignified transfer ceremony for four service members killed in the conflict with Iran, what I like to call the Iran War, his words showed what is really in his heart. He brought one of the families with him on Air Force One to Georgia. And this is what he said about their son's service record while they stood there listening. I read charts on all of the young people, and some are unbelievable. Some were a little bit, you know, they got a little bit of a little couple of little bad things put in. That is what he said when talking about our four military heroes we had just lost. On the same day, the remains were returned to American soil. At the same time, he also called Dover Air Force Base an incredible place, as though it were a resort and not the site where we receive our dead. I just hope that the family who's full weight of this loss probably is not kind of hit yet, does not look back on that moment and feel anything but proud of their son. Because they deserve better than what the president said yesterday. They all do. And we know that they are heroes. He went on to talk about the economy in a very odd monologue that was written to confuse the audience, but that also seemed to confuse the man reading it, Donald Trump. In four long years at the sleepy Joe Biden administration, they got less than one trillion of new investment in our country. In four years, much less than one trillion in less than two years. Much less than two years, actually. In fact, at the end of the first year, but less than two years, in my administration, we're securing more than $19.2 trillion in new investment from all over the world. That's what he said. And then he jumped to this. You see all the theft that's going on. Guys stealing a hundred million dollars. Some guy from the street steals a hundred million dollars. It's horrible. The president of the United States, who along with his family, has enriched himself by billions of dollars since taking office, was complaining about some unnamed and most likely made-up person in the street stealing a hundred million dollars. We could talk about who is really stealing from whom. Now, in the middle of the speech, he stopped to acknowledge the group of supporters who follow him from rally to rally, like he is a rock star. He said, look at the front row Joes. I love these people. I think they're about 283. I don't know what the hell they do. I think they make a lot of money, too. I'm hearing they're very rich. They follow us. It's a rock concert, right? Then he pointed out a group of women from North Carolina, beautiful women. They follow us, and they're at 218, I think 219. They come and I always say, What the hell are your husbands saying about this? He told the same 401k story about how Americans' 401ks are doing so well that he is getting stopped and told how amazing he and their retirement accounts are. He has told various versions of the speech for months, maybe even years at this point, but this time he added a new angle and a new story to it. He supposedly was told. They said, You know, I was a disaster. My family wouldn't talk to me. They thought I was a total loser. And now I'm like uh the one guy said, I feel like Warren Buffett. He added a policeman whose wife loves him much more than she did because of the stock market. He keeps claiming that families are reconciling and marriages are healing all because of him. And I want to this is the president of the United States speaking. He quickly moved on to something he knows is the single most damaging issue facing his presidency right now, affordability. And he knows it because he tried to make the word itself illegitimate. They use the word, first time I heard it, it was a word, you know, made up by the Democrats, affordability. He is so aware that the cost of living is destroying the livelihoods of Americans that he tried to convince us that the very concept of affordability and the word itself was invented by his enemies, the Democrats. And then at nearly the same moment, he admitted, so I just want you to remember that if you're paying a little bit more, a lot of it's come down now. We got it coming down very rapidly. And then he went on to say, we inherited something from Biden and we're giving it back to you thousands and thousands of dollars each family. We gave it to you. The problem is that he did not give every family thousands and thousands of dollars. None of us got thousands and thousands of dollars from Donald Trump. People know the truth because they see their bank account balances and then they see what groceries cost. No amount of double talk changes what is real. I mean, this happened in my own family. Pete, you know, my husband, he doesn't do the grocery shopping. Oddly enough, I like going grocery shopping. I don't like the prices things are costing, but it makes me, I guess I do feel like I've accomplished something. So I go grocery shopping. And I left the receipt on the counter, just put it down for a minute, and Pete walked in and he looked at it and he said, Oh my gosh. He was shocked at the prices because the last time he actually went grocery shopping, I don't know, Pete, was it like 2019 maybe? A long time ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago. And not, you know, he'd be happy to go if I asked him to. But he was shocked at the prices just in six years. No, we had a pandemic happen, we've had record inflation. But the reality is that the prices have not come down. They're getting more expensive. And Donald Trump is trying to convince us that something that we know that we can see with our own eyes is not real. And that opens up a whole Pandora's box of other issues when the president of the United States is trying to convince us that something that we can verify with facts that is actually affecting all of us is not true. You know, he went on to brag about his favorite construction project. We're building a tremendous military facility at the White House. It's a ballroom, but it's also a big military facility, a drone port on top and tremendous things underneath, admitting the real reason for the tearing down of the East Wing. You can tell I'm still not over that. I am not over that he tore down that part of our shared history. He used an official presidential speech to drive sales to a donor's company saying, go out and buy a Dell computer, okay? Because as far as I'm concerned, that's great stuff. And the reality is, like he's ever turned on a computer or used a computer on his own. I mean, let's be real. There was actually a quote he said a while back about how Barron was his tech support. And Barron, he was so impressed with Barron, don't quote me exactly, but that he could turn and turn off a computer, meaning that Donald Trump maybe couldn't. But here he is endorsing a certain brand, which by the way, we have other American computers and computer companies that he could be promoting, but they're not necessarily giving him all this extra support, if you will. He invited a family with small children up to the stage to talk about their Trump accounts. And as they walked up the stairs, he told them, You can't fall like Sleepy Joe, can't you? He also invited up another family onto the stage to talk. And as they were exiting, he was kind of greeting them all. Um it it appeared to me that some of the teenagers kind of sidestepped a direct encounter with him, but he was able to catch a young girl and he went in to try to give her a kiss on the forehead. And I just questioned, I asked myself, who would put their child in a position like that? I know that it's a big deal that a president of the United States wants to have you in close proximity, right? Like wants to, in essence, honor you or support you. And in normal times, I would be like, that makes sense. I just keep thinking in my mind, putting a child where he could touch them. I don't know. It's just a question I just kind of was thinking about over and over again as I saw that. You can actually see the whole encounter in the video of his speech. And then came the part that was truly disgusting and disrespectful to all Americans living and dead. Communism is, in my opinion, communism is the single greatest threat to our country and the history, including even World War I and World War II, Pearl Harbor, 9-11. I think it's the greatest threat that I've ever seen in our country. That is what Donald Trump, the president of the United States, said about communism, is what he has repeatedly said is what the Democratic Party is practicing. He's saying that it is a greater threat than all of those other dark periods in American history. He told the audience that the communists that he is manufacturing are an enemy so extreme, existential, and monstrous that anything done to stop them will be justified. I mean, that's pretty much what he's getting at. And it's the buildup to what is coming. He also said that John Osof and the Democrat communists want to let the Marxists into power, bankrupt your families, and leave you totally undefended with wide open borders. I mean, this is shameful. His goal right now is to continue to divide us and to make us see each other as existential threats to our safety and to our country. That's it. For a lot of people, this distraction is working. There are still people who believe all of it, even when the thoughts do not connect and the claims contradict each other. Trump's most loyal followers are a community of people who found something that makes them feel alive when he talks. COVID made people lonely. It made millions of Americans desperate for connection. And it gave Fox News and networks like it a captive audience with nothing better to do. People got accustomed to the entertainment and they got addicted to the energy. And Trump knows this. Even now, even with his visible decline, he can still recognize that entertainment is more important than anything else or anything he says. These people do not actually care about Trump accounts. They do not care about any of the numbers that he rattled off yesterday. They just want to feel like they are part of something. And our job, the job of every person who sees what is happening, is to show them that they can be part of something that serves truth instead of propaganda. There's a place for them where they can jump in, do their part, and be remembered by standing on the right side of history when it mattered most. When they realize that they have been scammed and they will, there has to be somewhere for them to land. The reality is that even without them, the midterms are still going to go terribly for the Republicans as long as the message of what is actually happening reaches enough people and they vote. At some point, the gap between what he says and what people experience in their own lives will become too wide to bridge with rallies like this and lies. But while the president was creating chaos and distraction on stage, his administration was aligning one of the most consequential agreements that could have ramifications across the globe for decades to come. Yesterday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the Saudi Energy Minister signed a 30-year nuclear cooperation agreement that gives American companies priority access to build Saudi Arabia's civilian nuclear program and opens a pathway for the kingdom to enrich its own uranium. The agreement was accompanied by what the administration calls a bilateral safeguards agreement. But like most things with the Trump administration, it is not as clear-cut as it sounds. When the United States signed a comparable nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates in 2009, the UAE accepted what is called the gold standard, no enrichment or reprocessing, and full international inspections through the IAEA's additional protocol. Saudi Arabia refused those terms, and the Trump administration agreed not to include it. In their place is an agreement where Washington and Riyadh monitor themselves. And because the deal lacks conventional oversight, Trump had to sign a separate national security waiver to make it go forward. He waived the safeguards because Saudi Arabia would not accept them, and he wanted the deal more than he wanted the safeguards to protect the United States and the entire world. This is the same Saudi Arabia whose crown prince told CBS in 2018 that if Iran develops a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia will follow suit as soon as possible. The same Saudi Arabia that ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside their own consulate because he wrote critically about the regime. That is who the Trump administration just signed a nuclear agreement with. And listen, I am never going to not mention that. What they did was heinous. And it is everything that our country once stood against. The original legislation meant to govern exactly this kind of deal. The No Nuclear Weapons for Saudi Arabia Act was co-sponsored by Senator Ed Markey and then Senator Marco Rubio. It required the gold standard, the IAEA inspections, and transparency about Khashoggi's killing. Rubio put his name on every one of those requirements today. As Secretary of State, Rubio is defending an agreement that abandons the very safeguards and that transparency he once argued were necessary and required. Non-proliferation experts warn this will trigger a regional arms race. Where Saudi Arabia goes, the UAE, Turkey, and Egypt will follow. Pakistan has already stated its nuclear program will be made available to the kingdom if needed. This is all happening while Donald Trump is waging a war against Iran for the stated purpose of preventing them from having nuclear capabilities while potentially handing enrichment capabilities to Iran's chief rival. With all the disinformation and distraction being thrown at us, maybe the most important thing to remember right now is that the truth is the truth and the facts are the facts. And that no amount of spectacle by the president can change that. No rally or 77-minute performance or manufactured outrage about communists and Mount Rushmore can change the truth. The truth has a way of finding its way out. It always does. And yesterday was further proof of that. The Trump administration did not announce this deal to the American people. Days before the signing, someone inside the government, close enough to know the agreement was ready and close enough to understand why it was being held back from the public eye, chose to talk to a reporter. That person did not have to do any of that. They chose to. Somewhere inside the system, someone saw what was being done. And at a great risk to themselves, they made sure the rest of us found out. And that is the reason why I still have hope for America. And you should too. This post actually was formulated over dinner. Pete and I were sitting, we went out to dinner, and it was actually right across the street from where one of the ICE raids had happened months and months ago. And I was looking out that window. I just kept thinking about what happened there. The terror, the inhumanity of it, and that it happened on American soil. And Pete and I were talking and about how we have to make sure that people know what is happening during this time. Because if anything good can come out of this, maybe it'll help future generations not let it happen again. But we also talked about how truth is the truth, that it doesn't matter what Trump says in that sense, because facts are what they are. They will always exist, no matter how they're spun or who tells them or anything like that. They will come out. And that is, I think, what's kind of saving us in this moment. The courts are holding to some degree, at least the lower courts, and people inside the administration are finding ways to make sure that what is really happening is getting out there. And they're going to be those unsung heroes that we will never know about that helped save our country. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, I will be here every single day. And together, we will always find hope for America. I'll see you tomorrow.