President Trump’s White House address Wednesday night is an important speech well worth studying. When an American president decides to make a prime time address from the White House, it is an important signal for the world to listen carefully. 

Mr. Trump delivered a methodical, fact-based speech filled with clear historic contrasts. Interestingly, he delivered his message in 20 minutes. This is unusual for Mr. Trump, who is typically comfortable going off script. That he kept tightly to schedule and didn’t deviate indicated he had important things to say.

The speech was a major effort to frame the choice for 2026. Furthermore, Mr. Trump sought to define the terms of the national debate we must have in thinking through the future of America.  That the propaganda press has downplayed and minimized the speech and its importance is a sign of one of two things. 

Either reporters did not listen to the speech and do not know how much rich material was packed into 20 minutes — or they do know it was an important statement of Mr. Trump’s thinking and want to deflect attention from it.

I watched Mr. Trump’s speech critically. I thought his previous, 90-minute, political speech at Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania had hurt rather than helped him. It was rambling, unstructured, and unfocused. So, I tuned into the speech to see if it could be focused, disciplined, clear, and filled with the right key messages.

Starting in 1965, I worked with and studied Ronald Reagan — who was then a citizen and later governor and president. I have watched a lot of tightly reasoned, short, and effective addresses.

While Mr. Trump’s style is remarkably different from “the Gipper” (as Mr. Reagan was known from his remarkable performance as George Gipp in the movie “Knute Rockne, All American”), his effectiveness is comparable.

The Wednesday night addresses set that stage for the election in a disciplined, controlled way. It used charts effectively in reinforcing Mr. Trump’s points about the economic, crime, and border disasters left behind by President Biden and the Democrats. It also clearly laid out the progress the Trump team has made in 11 short months.

Anyone who wants to campaign for the Republicans in 2026 would do well to study this speech and learn its arguments — and the facts which support those arguments. Simply put, Mr. Trump outlined the heart of the argument Republicans must win over the next 10 months.

Let me make three big points about the 2026 elections.

First, the elections are going to be about big choices. The propaganda press, left-wing activists, and Democratic establishment will do everything they can to avoid how big and stark the choice is about which way America should go. 

Mr. Trump and the Republicans will repeatedly make clear the gigantic difference in the direction the two parties would take America. Mr. Trump did a great job of outlining choices. He argued for controlling the border, fighting crime, and keeping Americans safe. 

He touted enormous economic growth, protecting women’s sports, and projecting strength overseas. Further, he advocated vast increases in energy production to collapse prices — over the left’s plans to shatter our economy in pursuit of an impossible green agenda.

Simply displaying the cost of gasoline under Mr. Biden and the amazing decline in cost of gasoline under Mr. Trump’s administration would make a great billboard. It could say “You choose.”

Second, the challenge for Republicans is going to be finding more solutions. In the end, people want to know what you are going to do for them next — not what you did for them recently. 

Health costs are a good example. When a family of four is paying $27,000 a year for health insurance, something is profoundly wrong. Affordability is much more about the cost of health care than the cost of food or gasoline. 

A strong transparency bill that gave every American the right to know the cost and quality of health transactions on the front end would do more to lower the cost of health care than any other single step. Republicans fighting for your right to know costs would be in line with 95 percent of the American people, according to a Kaiser Permanente poll.

These kinds of popular solutions would expand the GOP’s reach and isolate the Democrats as the party of gloom, negativity, and no real solutions.

Third, in the end, the elections will be a question of which kind of world people want. In October 2016, I was giving a TV interview saying Mr. Trump was going to win. The host began asking me about state after state where the polls had Mr. Trump behind. 

Finally, I told the host he and I simply lived in two alternative universes. In his universe, Secretary Hillary Clinton was going to be the next president. In my universe, Mr. Trump was going to be the next president. I said we’d find out on Election Day which universe was real. It turned out, mine was.

Recently, Maria Bartiromo asked me about the 2026 election, and I said the Trump boom would decisively beat the Democrats’ gloom. I projected the GOP will gain seats in the House and Senate.

The Wednesday night White House address made me much more confident in that analysis.