WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump made his triumphal return to the House chambers on Tuesday with an angry campaign-style speech packed with lies and personal grievances, vilifying his predecessor in the White House and Democratic members of Congress, all while downplaying threats to the economy his policies are already creating.

“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started,” he said, with Vice President JD Vance and House speaker Mike Johnson behind him on the dais, and his near-constant companion and adviser Elon Musk in the gallery above.

On a day that his new 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada sent the markets reeling, Trump barely acknowledged the concerns.

“There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that,” he said. “It won’t be much.”

He lied about the state of the economy on the day of his return to office: “We inherited from the previous administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”

He blamed the current price of eggs on the former president: “Joe Biden, especially, let the price of eggs get out of control.”

He went through his familiar litany of absurdly old people on the Social Security rolls: “1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159.”

In fact, Biden’s economy was enjoying steady growth and inflation had come down to under 3% annually ― a “soft landing” from the pandemic that many economists thought would be impossible.

Egg prices have spiked since Trump took office, largely because of the spread of bird flu infecting chicken flocks.

And the statistics about Social Security, while eroding confidence in the national retirement and disability system, are entirely inaccurate ― the result of Musk’s young aides, who have been rampaging through the federal agencies’ computer systems, not understanding the Social Security Administration’s rolls.

He falsely claimed that new auto plants are “opening up all over the place.” He, yet again, lied about how tariffs work, claiming that “trillions” would come in from other countries when, in reality, tariffs are collected by American importers and passed along to American consumers.

Trump then turned to foreign policy, where he repeated his imperialist threats of annexing territory belonging to other countries. “We’re taking it back,” he said, regarding the Panama Canal. And about Greenland, which belongs to NATO ally Denmark, he said, “One way or another we’re going to get it.”

He once more repeated his lie that the United States has spent $350 billion to support Ukraine to fight Russia compared to $100 million from western Europe, even though the actual numbers are $204 billion from Europe and $183 billion from the United States. The vast majority of the American aid, further, was in the form of old military stock that is now being replaced by American workers in American factories.

Trump also did not acknowledge that dictator Vladimir Putin started the war with his invasion three years ago. Nor did he mention that Putin has targeted residential buildings with missiles and drones while his troops have raped and murdered civilians in areas they seized ― both actions that experts describe as war crimes.

Dwarfing the amount of time Trump spent on the economy or foreign policy, though, was how much of the speech Trump spent attacking trans women participating in women’s sports, DEI efforts in government, and industry and “culture war” issues generally.

“Our country will be woke no longer,” he said.

Trump also took the opportunity to complain, yet again, about the prosecutions against him after he left office in 2021. “We have ended weaponisation of government, where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent, like me,” he said.

In truth, Trump was investigated and charged by federal prosecutors for his actions leading up to and on his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt, and his refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him to his South Florida country club.

He was also charged by Georgia prosecutors for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in that state. And his one prosecution that ended in a felony conviction was for his falsification of business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star ahead of his 2016 election.

Trump’s last address before Congress came in February 2020, the day before the Republican-led Senate chose not to remove him from office after his impeachment for having tried to extort Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into announcing an investigation into then-Democratic challenger Joe Biden, and just before a month before the Covid pandemic shut down the country. That speech was relatively muted in tone, but still packed with lies, and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded by tearing up the copy of the speech Trump had presented to her before he began.