Trump’s ‘Bah! Humbug!’ address suggests he is feeling the chill of opinion polls | Donald Trump

It will go down in history as the “Bah! Humbug!” address.

Surrounded by Christmas trees and garlands before a fireplace, Donald Trump on Wednesday gave a convincing rendition of Ebenezer Scrooge, the elderly miser who despises Christmas and blames everyone but himself.

The US president sounded like a desperate man, pointing an accusing finger at Joe Biden and spreading the opposite of charity and cheer on issues such as immigration. So much for ’tis the season to be jolly.

Like Biden, Trump has abandoned the traditional end-of-year presidential press conference. He preferred to give a much-hyped 20-minute speech. If he had been sitting in the Oval Office, he might have got sleepy; instead he stood in the diplomatic room and ranted with monotone anger.

Wearing a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, Trump unleashed a shouty stream of consciousness with barely a pause or punctuation mark. Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, recently observed that he has an “alcoholic’s personality” but apparently this was a sugar high: just before the remarks started, according to a White House pool report, an usher brought in three Diet Cokes and ice.

“Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it,” Trump said, starting as he meant to go on by telling a lie: he claimed that inflation was the worst in 48 years when he took office, when in fact it had come back down to 3%.

He went on to place blame at the feet of Biden, previous trade deals, immigrants and what he described as a corrupt system. As at his campaign rallies, Trump painted a lurid picture of Biden forcing “transgender for everybody” and throwing open the border to criminals from insane asylums. He claimed to have “broken the grip of sinister woke radicals in our schools”.

The president has repeatedly referred to “affordability” as a Democratic hoax. On Wednesday he conceded that prices remain high while arguing that the nation was “poised” for an economic boom. “I am bringing those high prices down and bringing them down very fast,” he said. By way of example, he claimed a sharp drop in gasoline prices, even though a White House graphic displayed by Fox News as he spoke showed only a slight decline in the national average.

Trump also announced that he would send a “warrior dividend” of $1,776 to 1.45 million US service members in the coming week. He said it had been made possible by revenue from tariffs, failing to mention those same tariffs have driven prices up.

Trump delivered his customary boasts about settling eight wars and bringing peace to the Middle East “for the first time in 3,000 years”. He repeated ugly remarks demonising Somali Americans and echoed European far-right extremists by stating: “We are now seeing reverse migration as migrants go back home, leaving more housing and more jobs for Americans.”

But this was not an address by a self-confident man dishing out Christmas presents to the nation. It smacked of desperation from one who can feel the December windchill of opinion polls – a Reuters/ Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed just 33% of US adults approve of how Trump has handled the economy – dissent in his own Republican ranks and the Jeffrey Epstein files looming on Friday.

The speech also revealed Trump’s need for a reliable foil. Over the years Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been useful nemeses for a man and movement defined less by what they are for than what they are against.

The point was illustrated earlier on Wednesday when Trump’s presidential walk of fame at the White House unveiled plaques that called “Barack Hussein Obama … one of the most divisive political figures in American history” and said, “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American history”.

Good luck with that. In truth Biden has been gone 11 months and people don’t think much about him any more. Trump needs a new punching bag but Democrats do not have an obvious leader for him to target.

When the remarks wrapped and the president was given the all clear, a pool report said, he turned to the press and said, “You think that’s easy?” and then took a swig of Diet Coke. He suggested that Wiles had told him to give the speech and asked, how did I do? Wiles assured him: “I told you 20 minutes and you were 20 minutes on the dot.”

But there were few tidings of comfort or joy. We are still in the arc of the story where Scrooge, the Grinch and Mr Potter are at their unrepentant worst, determined to crush the Christmas spirit. Friday, however, casts a long shadow: beware Epstein, the ghost of Christmas past.