C-SPAN reported Thursday evening that President Donald Trump’s 70-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) was among the longest in recent history, while Joe Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) had been among the shortest.
Last week, C-SPAN reported that Biden’s 24.5-minute acceptance speech had been the shortest since Walter Mondale’s 32.5-minute speech in 1984.
.@JoeBiden’s acceptance speech is shortest at a #DemConvention since ’84.
Longest: @BillClinton in 1996. pic.twitter.com/XiIzfqMsAN
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 21, 2020
The longest convention acceptance speech, C-SPAN noted at the time, had been President Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech at the DNC in Chicago in 1996, when he was nominated for reelection by his party and spoke for 64.5 minutes.
Trump one-hour-and-ten-minute oration exceeded Clinton’s mark by about 5 minutes — not including the fireworks and opera that followed:
At the end of Pres Trump’s 1 hr 10 min speech, fireworks were set off at the Washington Monument.. pic.twitter.com/EPRcUuPagz
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 28, 2020
The president’s speech capped an emotional evening, featuring a testimonial from the widow of retired police captain David Dorn, killed in Black Lives Matter riots earlier this year; praise for Trump’s criminal justice reforms from freed prisoner Alice Johnson; and a speech by the parents of Kayla Mueller, an American slain by ISIS.
The setting provoked controversy, as journalists and Democrats complained that Trump was using the White House (and, later, the Washington Monument) for partisan election displays.
Protesters gathered outside the White House and attempted to disrupt the speeches before marching through the city.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected in Washington, DC, on Friday for a political rally organized by Al Sharpton to coincide with the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
