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In the end, while political pundits may debate the historic length of the speech, citing it as the longest in modern memory at one hour and forty-eight minutes, historians and ordinary citizens alike may remember it less for its claims of economic triumph and more for what it conspicuously avoided: a clear, timely, and reliable promise of the $2,000 stimulus check, the very lifeline so many had been hoping to clutch amid uncertainty, inflation, and financial strain. The applause fades, the lights dim, but the silence of that missing promise lingers, echoing far longer than any words of victory ever could.
