Khaberni - President Donald Trump promised to deliver a lengthy speech on the state of the union, and indeed he kept his promise on Tuesday evening.
The speech lasted about one hour and 48 minutes, making it the longest speech ever given during a joint session of Congress in at least 60 years, according to the American Presidency Project, which has been tracking the duration of each speech since 1964.
With this, Trump breaks the record that he himself set last year, when he spoke for one hour and 39 minutes in a speech that was not technically a state of the union address since it was the first year of Trump's non-consecutive second term, preventing it from being categorized as a state of the union address. Prior to that, the record was held by former President Bill Clinton for his 2000 state of the union address, which lasted one hour and 28 minutes.
The shortest speech in the past sixty years was President Richard Nixon’s state of the union address in 1972, which lasted only 28 minutes, according to the American Presidency Project.
The speech time included long pauses for applause, interruptions, honorees, and cheers for the American men's hockey team, which won the first Olympic gold medal.
The state of the union address gives the president a chance to set or reset the national agenda, and Trump's speech comes at a time when most Americans say the country is worse off than it was a year ago, according to the latest survey by NPR, PBS News, and the Marist Institute.
