Fox News’s Brit Hume, one of America’s most respected political analysts, and a man more given to wry scepticism than to partisanship or hyperbole, described Donald Trump’s speech to Congress as:
‘the most boisterous, the longest, the most partisan speech I’ve heard a President give… to a joint session of congress… and I go back maybe about 50 years on this. I also think it may have been the most effective. If you ever doubted that Donald Trump is the colossus of our time and our nation, this night and this speech should have put that to rest…’
There is no quarrelling with Hume about length. At one hour and 40 minutes, Trump’s speech broke Bill Clinton’s record of one hour, 28 minutes and 40 seconds. Or about partisanship. With the exception of Barack Obama – ‘I won. Deal with it’ – most presidents pose as unifiers and offer their defeated opponents an olive branch.
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