The president promised to help those workers by curtailing government benefits to people who do not work. “Welfare reform, I see it, and I’ve talked to people,” he said. “I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who doesn’t work at all. And the person who is not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that’s working his and her ass off. And it’s not going to happen. Not going to happen.”

Attacking the rich is exactly the sort of language that helped Mr. Trump win the presidency, and that has formed the foundation of the sales pitch both Senate and House Republicans have made for their versions of the tax bill. It is not supported by independent analyses.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has found that the bulk of the benefits from the House and Senate tax bills, in sheer dollars, would flow to the highest-earning Americans. That is particularly true of the Senate bill which the committee projects, as written, would actually raise taxes on Americans earning $75,000 or less by 2027. In contrast, high earners would continue to benefit.

Mr. Trump would almost certainly benefit from the Senate bill’s slight reduction in the top marginal income tax rate — and benefit greatly from both bills’ provisions that would lower taxes dramatically for owners of so-called pass-through companies, which is the structure of the bulk of Mr. Trump’s business empire.

The president was correct in noting the complaints from Democrats on this front. On Wednesday, Mr. Schumer charged on the Senate floor that the tax bill would disproportionately help the top 1 percent of earners. “They don’t need a tax cut,” he said. “To lavish them with huge tax breaks and ask the middle class to bear the cost — that’s about as backward as it gets.”

Near the end of his speech, Mr. Trump spoke more favorably about the wealthy in order to complain about the opposition by Democrats to an attempt to eliminate the estate tax, which currently applies only to a handful of wealthy estates.

“I see people right here,” he said. “They’re obviously very rich, and they love their children, right? In this group? They love their children. They’re very rich. They want to pass on what they have without having to have the kids sell the property, mortgage up half of it. And — but the biggest problem we have on that one: These Democrats are being brutal. And you know, I call them obstructionists. But they want to stop the estate tax. They want to stop the death tax from, you know, being rescinded. But we’re going to try our best on that one.”