Donald Trump walked into the U.S.–Saudi Investment Forum, looked out at a room full of billionaires, and announced he was “very modest.” Ironically, that was right before he began bragging about his achievements.
During his speech at the forum, Trump first called the U.S. ” the hottest country anywhere in the world.” We still don’t know how that is an appropriate praise to use. But the very next moment, he said something even more outrageous. He sang a sermon about how he “wants to be very modest,” before blowing it up with a self-boasting rant.
“This has been, according to those that seem to say it, and I will say, I would never say a thing like that because I want to be very modest. I always want to be as modest as modest as I can. They say this has been the best nine months that any president has ever had.”
While the crowd laughed at the word “modest,” irony died a painful death there. First, Trump quoted an unnamed “they” as the source of this brag. That’s his favorite trick. He attributes the flattery to someone else while making sure you hear it as his own gospel. But then, he also didn’t care to explain exactly how the past nine months have been the “best.”
Here’s a fun fact: Trump has been in his second term for ten months, not nine, since Jan. 20, 2025. Over those ten months, the U.S. economy has been fine-ish at best, but nowhere near historic. GDP bounced back at a 3% annualized pace in Q2 after actually shrinking in Q1 (via Economist). Inflation is running at about 3% year-on-year, according to the latest CPI release.
Unemployment has risen to around a four-year high in the 4.3–4.4% range (via BLS). On the ground, citizens have been unhappy with the prices of groceries, healthcare, and housing. The government also had an unreasonable, selfish 43-day shutdown, affecting the paychecks of millions. With that data, only Trump could call it the “best nine months.”
Add the unjustified ICE raids, violent deportations, and insane tariffs affecting foreign relations, and it’s nowhere near even “good.” Even politically for Trump, this “best nine months ever” is happening while his approval ratings hover around 40%. In recent polling, it has already hit a second-term low of 37%. Yet, he’s called all these polls fake and is celebrating his time like a honeymoon.
While Trump has perfected performance art to manipulate the masses, social media has become adept at shredding him. One said, “Only Trump could claim modesty while handing himself the gold medal.” Mind you, this self-boasting isn’t a one-off thing. Trump once told the country, “I alone can fix it,” at the 2016 Republican National Convention (via The Atlantic). For him, he’s the singular savior of a broken America.
In other instances, he even called himself “a very stable genius” and “really smart” (via X). But of course, he has to say that since nobody else in their right mind would. More recently, Trump compared his own popularity to beating George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on an imaginary ballot. Sadly, the level of delusion Trump is living in has gone too far now.
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