Donald Trump has always been more successful as a hype man than anything else, and his speech last night did nothing to change this. While beforehand speculation raged about whether it would contain a declaration of national emergency, or simply be another unhinged performance, the nine-minute address turned out to contain nothing new. Manifesting the kind of restrained resentment he always displays when he isn’t allowed to adopt his preferred mode of speaking and simply broadcast his inner monologue, Trump wearily went through the talking points about immigration he has repeated since announcing his candidacy: “illegal aliens” are bringing drugs into the country and committing crimes, and they need to be stopped.

Of course, liberal fact-checkers had their replies ready before the words had even crawled off Trump’s teleprompter. The vast majority of drugs in the US are smuggled through legal ports of entry. Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at significantly lower rates than the general population. The list goes on.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House speaker Nancy Pelosi, in their official response to Trump’s address, declined the fact-checking approach and instead focused on hitting Trump over the government shutdown. They pointed out that the partial closure was causing all kinds of economic chaos that would only get worse the longer it went on, and that they could negotiate over border security with the president while the government was functioning.