Trump delivered the slowest State of the Union on record — here's how he compares to past presidents

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February 3, 2018 2:06 PM

Trump's more than 5,800 word State of the Union address was the slowest-delivered SOTU speech in the half century that such information has been tracked.

President Donald Trump delivered the slowest State of the Union address in the half century that such data has been tracked.
Trump spoke at a rate of just more than 72 words per minute, about 20 words per minute slower than the next slowest speaker, President Lyndon Johnson.

President Donald Trump's 5,800-word State of the Union address, which clocked in at over an hour and 20 minutes, was the slowest-delivered speech in the half century that such information has been tracked.

In total, Trump spoke at a rate of 72.6 words per minute, nearly 20 words per minute slower than the next slowest speaker on record, President Lyndon Johnson.

Johnson, both Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush, and President Bill Clinton all spoke at a rate of less than 100 words per minute. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama spoke in excess of 101.5 words per minute, according to information from The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The quickest average delivery belonged to Nixon, who presented his speeches at a staggering clip of 128.21 words per minute. The second fastest on average was Reagan at 114.9 per minute, followed by Obama's rate of 109.3 words per minute.

The average word length of State of the Union addresses has increased over the years, just as the average time has gone up as well. While the average Johnson speech lasted for more than 53 minutes, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush kept their addresses at roughly 45 minutes or less on average. Since then, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and now Trump have eclipsed 52 minutes on average, with the typical Clinton and Obama speech extending past one hour.

Trump's Tuesday speech was the third-longest on record in terms of time, with Clinton's 1995 and 2000 addresses standing as the only that went on longer. That 1995 address was longer than 9,100 words as well, the longest of this time span.

Spoken State of the Union addresses are a fairly recent phenomenon. While Presidents George Washington and John Adams delivered such addresses at the start of the presidency, they were exclusively written until President Woodrow Wilson broke the trend in 1913. After President Calvin Coolidge returned to written addresses in 1924, the spoken address did not make another appearance until President Franklin Roosevelt delivered one in 1934. Since that address, just six State of the Union addresses were exclusively written.

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