Former President Donald Trump broke his own record for the longest convention acceptance speech in history, going over schedule by venting about electric cars and cracking jokes about Kim Jong-un.
Trump’s 2020 speech lasted 70 minutes, which was a record for keeping delegates in their seats before the big balloon release. But this one, which came days after he survived an assassination attempt, lasted more than an hour and a half — 92 minutes.
There were long stretches in the final third of his remarks when the Fiserv Stadium crowd was nearly silent during parts of his monologue, though the audience perked up and applauded when he joked about Kim or made observations about the Taliban.
Trump’s convention speech began with a dramatic recounting of the terrifying moment he was shot by a man at his rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, and the survivor of the assassination attempt held the crowd’s attention rapt.
After about 20 minutes, he moved on to attack prosecutors and the criminal cases against them.
He then ran through a series of policy preferences, promising to boost U.S. energy production and curb an “invasion” of immigrants, before returning to many of the issues that bother him most and drawing on material he shares at his regular rallies.
Former President Donald Trump spoke for more than 90 minutes, breaking his own record for the longest convention speech
The indoor stadium stage, though packed with supporters dressed in red, white and blue, had a different atmosphere than its outdoor rallies and airport hangar events.
As he crossed the 70-minute mark, he warned of a wave of illegal immigration, while a graphic showing encounters with migrants at the border was displayed on the jumbo-tron inside the stadium.
“They come from mental institutions and asylums,” Trump said of the immigrants.
By that time, Trump had already surpassed his own record. (Bill Clinton’s famous 1996 speech, which was criticized for being too long, also topped the hour mark. That’s according to statistics kept by the American Presidential Project at UC-Santa Barbara and marked by Political).
Trump’s faithful gave him laughter and applause, but the energy in the room faltered during long passages, and at times Trump read in a monotone.
Trump continued to complain about electric vehicles, although this time he focused not on driving times but on the high cost of building charging stations.
“They build eight chargers in a certain location in the Midwest, eight chargers for $9 billion… Think about it: They spent $9 billion on eight chargers, three of which didn’t work,” he said.
Trump slams electric vehicle charging stations, calling them a scam
“It’s nice to get along with someone who has a lot of nuclear weapons,” Trump said in a passage about Kim Jong-un.
Trump spoke for more than an hour and a half before the balloons finally fell in Milwaukee.
He praised Hungarian President Viktor Orban and then toured territories that Russia had occupied under previous administrations. “Under President Trump, Russia took nothing,” he said.
At that point, there were long silences in the crowd in the convention hall. Those who had seats took them, while those in the aisles on the floor remained standing.
The crowd came alive when he improvised the line about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
“I got along very well with Kim Jong-un. It’s good to get along with someone who has a lot of nuclear weapons,” Trump says, earning laughter.
Trump also used a line he had already tried at his Hannibal Lecter rallies when he complained about illegal immigration. “The late, great Hannibal Lecter would love to take you to dinner,” he joked.
“This was the first good thing that happened to the Democrats in the last three weeks,” saying Former Obama adviser David Axelrod, who has expressed concern about President Biden’s weaknesses as a candidate, spoke on CNN in comments largely about the attacks.
Audience members clapped their hands together several times when Trump mentioned red meat. “We will not allow men to play in women’s sports,” he said in one of the applause lines, before making an unsubstantiated claim about the killings in the nation’s capital.
“Our nation’s capital is a horrible killing field,” Trump said. “They go to see the Washington Monument and end up getting stabbed, murdered and shot.”
Crime in DC Statistics show a 26 percent drop in homicides in 2024 compared to 2023.
At a convention where much of the attention focused on his personal biography, with testimonies from family members and videos packed with images of Trump with celebrities from Oprah to Don King, Trump made time for some of his tax proposals.
One of them was about introducing changes to the laws that regulate the treatment of workers who earn a large part of their income through tips.
“Everybody loves waitresses, caddies and drivers… let them keep their money,” Trump said.