President Donald Trump’s reality-distortion field seems to have finally ensnared the president himself.

First, a brief recap of the last few days:

But judging from his speech Wednesday at the U.S.– Saudi Investment Forum, THINGS COULDN’T BE GOING BETTER.

Trump opened the speech with his usual anecdotes about “how hot” America is right now compared to its performance under his predecessor. But things went sideways as he found himself in front of the highly receptive audience, sketching out an alternate reality for himself in real time.

The first indication that Trump had jumped the tracks came just minutes into his address, when he drew unintentional laughter while bragging about his modesty. The line coincided with a boast about being the best president ever.

“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 modest, as modest as I can,” he began. “They say this has been the best nine months that any president has ever had.”

Then, on a tangent about the Federal Reserve, Trump paused to offer the job of Fed chair to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was in the audience. Bessent politely declined the role, which is currently held by frequent Trump target Jerome Powell.

Without an ounce of self-reflection, Trump then daydreamed about having a job where all he does is play golf and “make a little speech.”

“I’d love the Fed job,” Trump said, surprised at Bessent’s rejection. “To me, it’s the easiest job in the world. You play golf for 28, 29 days, then you go and make a little speech, tell everybody, in the case of the current guy, the wrong information because he has no clue.”

President Donald Trump smiles as he speaks at an event for the signing of the GENIUS Act, a bill that regulates stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency, in the East Room of the White House, on July 18, 2025.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The president claimed the job of keeping the U.S. economy stable “is all based on instincts” and criticized Powell for wanting to hire thousands of economists to collect and report data.

Trump then went on a hard-to-follow rant about how the Fed interviewed 71 people, but “only two people got it right.” He declined to name one of them “because I don’t like him personally,” but eagerly named himself as the second: “The other one that got it the most right was a man named President Donald J. Trump.”

He circled back to the subject 15 or so minutes later to joke (?) about firing the treasury secretary himself. “I’m going to fire your ass,” he said, laughing as he looked at Bessent in the audience.

But the best was yet to come.

In between his dual rants about the Fed, Trump found himself pondering the COVID-19 pandemic ― and also how, before that time, he’s pretty sure he could have beat a split ticket featuring presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

“I met with 2 pollsters [before COVID], they said, “Sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln came back from the dead and they aligned, and they went for the president, vice president as a combination, you’d be beating them by 25 points,” he said.

“The next day, I was told that something strange is happening,” he recalled, seeming to reference the pandemic and blame it for his 2020 election loss without actually acknowledging the loss or saying the word “China.”

“There’s a lot of death being reported in a certain country, I won’t tell you which one because that country is well represented here, but you know which one.”

Elsewhere in his address, Trump also said the prime minister of Pakistan told him his tariffs have “saved millions and millions of lives,” called for an investigation into the “conspiracy” of climate change, claimed Georgetown canceled Tiffany Trump’s 2020 graduation ceremony not because of COVID but because “she did so well in school,” and called tariffs “frankly, the best thing that’s happened to our country.”

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