President Donald Trump teased an address to the nation for Thursday but did not provide any further details on the topic or reason for the planned speech.
News of the expected remarks came in a post to Truth Social which read: “President Trump will be making a Speech to the Nation on Thursday evening, at 9 P.M. Eastern. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Unlike most of his missives on that social media platform, the post was written in the third person and did not indicate that he had authored or posted it himself.
The White House did not respond to a request for information on the planned remarks, including the topic or reason for them, except to send The Independent a link to the same Truth Social post that lacked that information.
It’s not yet known whether Trump will avail himself of the opportunity to deliver a formal sit-down address from the Oval Office.
Trump has delivered two from behind the iconic Resolute desk since returning to power last year. The first was a set of September 9 remarks on his administration’s efforts to promote “law and order” in the wake of the stabbing of a Ukrainian immigrant, Iryna Zarutska.
He spoke from the same place a day later after the assassination of GOP activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah.
Trump has also delivered two other prime-time speeches in his second term — one touting his administration’s progress on the economy last December, and another in April updating the country on the progress of the war he started against Iran.
He rarely spoke from the Oval Office during his first four years in the White House, delivering his three formal addresses from there in prime time.
One of those three, a speech he gave at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, was widely panned as a shambolic affair that started when Trump was caught on a hot microphone cursing over an ink stain on his shirt.
“Ah f***. Uh oh. I got a pen mark,” he said before asking those present if anyone had a wipe or some “white stuff” to hide the stain on his shirt.
Moments later, he spooked markets by mistakenly saying he was halting the entry of all cargo being sent from Europe to the U.S. for the next month, leaving his advisers to clarify that he had meant to announce a travel ban from Europe — not a ban on the entry of goods.
