At 1 hour and 47 minutes, President Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday was the longest on record.
The president is not one to shy from long-winded speeches that can stretch for hours, covering a broad range of topics and digressing into tangents. But this time, his address was lengthy even by his standards.
It surpassed the length of the State of the Union addresses Mr. Trump made during his first term, which averaged 1 hour 20 minutes, and was the longest of any president since The American Presidency Project began keeping records in 1964.
The record was previously held by President Bill Clinton, who spoke for 1 hour 28 minutes in his last State of the Union address in 2000, during which he spent great lengths touting his economic achievements and his hopes for the nation in the new millennium.
While Mr. Trump has delivered some of the longest addresses in recent history, the length of his speeches by word count were below other presidents’, including President Barack Obama and President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Biden’s speeches averaged 2,643 — or 32 percent — more words than Mr. Trump’s speeches during his first term, despite taking less time.
State of the Union addresses have progressively grown longer over the past six decades.
From 1964 to 1992, average speech times across a president’s term were under an hour. Mr. Clinton, known for his skills as a gifted orator, was the first president to break this mold. And since Mr. Obama, every president has delivered speeches that ran past the 60-minute mark, on average.
The president is not one to shy from long-winded speeches that can stretch for hours, covering a broad range of topics and digressing into tangents. But this time, his address was lengthy even by his standards.
It surpassed the length of the State of the Union addresses Mr. Trump made during his first term, which averaged 1 hour 20 minutes, and was the longest of any president since The American Presidency Project began keeping records in 1964.
The record was previously held by President Bill Clinton, who spoke for 1 hour 28 minutes in his last State of the Union address in 2000, during which he spent great lengths touting his economic achievements and his hopes for the nation in the new millennium.
While Mr. Trump has delivered some of the longest addresses in recent history, the length of his speeches by word count were below other presidents’, including President Barack Obama and President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Biden’s speeches averaged 2,643 — or 32 percent — more words than Mr. Trump’s speeches during his first term, despite taking less time.
State of the Union addresses have progressively grown longer over the past six decades.
From 1964 to 1992, average speech times across a president’s term were under an hour. Mr. Clinton, known for his skills as a gifted orator, was the first president to break this mold. And since Mr. Obama, every president has delivered speeches that ran past the 60-minute mark, on average.
