How Long is President Donald Trump’s Address to Congress?

Donald Trump CPAC, Donald Trump fake news, Donald Trump CPAC speech

Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 24, 2017. (Getty)

President Donald Trump is about to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress. How long should viewers expect this speech to last?

Trump’s speech is scheduled to begin at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, and it should wrap up no later than 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time. With speeches like these, presidents typically don’t begin exactly at the start time, and even when he does show up, he spends several minutes walking through Congress and shaking hands with people, and so not all of those 90 minutes will be spent on the actual address.

The speech itself is traditionally about an hour long, and so assuming Trump does not arrive more than 10 minutes after the scheduled start time, he should conclude between 10:10 p.m. and 10:20 p.m. Eastern Time.

This address isn’t being referred to as a State of the Union address, but that’s essentially what it is. In his first year in office, presidents usually give some sort of major speech to the nation and to Congress, but it’s up to them whether they want to call that a State of the Union, or if they want their first State of the Union to be held during their second year in office, when they can tout more of their accomplishments. Trump has opted for the latter option, as Barack Obama did in 2009.

Although history suggests that this speech will be about an hour long, Trump in the past has broken from the norm with some of his speeches that have gone on significantly longer than usual. Trump’s Republican National Convention speech, for instance, was 75 minutes long, whereas in 2012, Mitt Romney’s was only about 40 minutes, and in 2008, John McCain’s was only about 55 minutes. However, Trump’s inauguration speech was 17 minutes, which was a pretty standard length, shorter than Barack Obama’s in 2009 but longer than George W. Bush’s in 2001.

Trump’s entire address is available to stream live on this page.