Trump breaks record for longest congressional speech in HISTORY at 92 minutes… bemoaning electric charging stations and calling DC a ‘terrible battlefield’

Former President Donald Trump has broken his own record for the longest convention acceptance speech ever, going over schedule by complaining about electric cars and making jokes about Kim Jong Un.

Trump’s 2020 speech lasted 70 minutes, a record in itself for keeping delegates in their seats for the big balloon drop. 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 periods in the last third of his speech when the audience in the Fiserv arena was nearly silent during parts of his monologue, though the crowd did rise to its feet and cheer when he made jokes about Kim or comments about the Taliban.

Trump’s convention speech began with a dramatic replay of the terrifying moment a man shot him at his Pennsylvania rally on Saturday. The attempted assassination survivor held the audience’s attention.

After about 20 minutes, he began attacking the prosecutors and the criminal cases against him.

He then went on to outline a series of policy preferences, promising to increase U.S. energy production and combat an “invasion” of immigrants. He then went back to his pet peeves, drawing on material he shares at his regular meetings.

The indoor arena, though packed with supporters dressed in red, white and blue, had a different atmosphere than his open-air rallies and airport hangar events.

After 70 minutes, he warned of a wave of illegal immigration, as a graph showing the encounters with migrants at the border appeared on the big screen in the arena.

“They come from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump said of migrants.

By that point, Trump had already broken his own record. (Bill Clinton’s infamously long 1996 speech, which was criticized for being too long, also lasted more than an hour, according to statistics compiled by the American Presidency Project at UC-Santa Barbara and marked by Politics).

Trump’s loyal fans laughed and applauded him, but the energy in the room was weak during the longer passages and Trump sometimes read in a monotone.

Trump continued to complain about electric vehicles, although this time he did not address the issue of driving times. Instead, he focused on the high cost of building charging stations.

“They build eight charging stations in a certain location in the Midwest, eight charging stations for $9 billion… Imagine if they spent $9 billion on eight charging stations, three of which didn’t work,” he said.

Trump attacked electric vehicle charging stations, calling them a rip-off

“It’s nice to work 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 were finally released in Milwaukee

He praised Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and then ran through territory that Russia had seized under previous administrations. “Under President Trump, Russia has seized nothing,” he said.

At that moment, long silences fell among the crowd in the convention hall. People who had seats took them, while people in the aisles remained standing on the floor.

The audience was on edge when he improvised about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

“Kim Jong-un, I got along with him very well. It’s nice to be around someone who has a lot of nuclear weapons,” Trump says, making him laugh.

Trump also used a rally-tested line about Hannibal Lecter when complaining about illegal immigration. “The late great Hannibal Lecter: He’d like to invite you over for dinner,” he joked.

“This was the first good thing that happened to Democrats in the last three weeks,” said former Obama adviser David Axelrod, who in comments on CNN, particularly about the attacks, expressed concerns about President Biden’s weaknesses as a candidate.

Audience members clasped their hands several times as Trump tossed out some red meat. “We will not have men playing in women’s sports,” he said in one of his applause lines, before making an unsubstantiated claim about murders in the nation’s capital.

“The capital of our nation, a terrible battlefield,” Trump said. “They go to look at the Washington Monument, only to be stabbed, murdered, shot.

crime in dc statistics show a 26 percent decrease in the number of murders in 2024 compared to 2023.

During a conference that focused heavily on his personal biography, featuring testimonies from family members and photo-packed videos of Trump with celebrities from Oprah to Don King, Trump also made time for some of his tax proposals.

One of these was about making changes to the law regarding the treatment of workers who earn a large portion of their income through tips.

“Everybody loves waitresses, caddies and drivers… let them keep their money,” Trump said.