Desperate Trump, 80, Breaks Rambling Record Before Election
The president went on… and on… and on.
Donald Trump has set a new benchmark for his second presidency by giving a record-breaking rambling speech.
The 80-year-old president held court at a campaign rally for Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson and gubernatorial hopeful Zach Lahn in Iowa on Sunday, lasting a staggering one hour, 59 minutes, and 41 seconds.
His Iowa appearance eclipsed the previous second-term record he set at a North Carolina rally last month by more than eight minutes.
US President Donald Trump departs after delivering remarks at a midterm campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, US, November 1, 2026. REUTERS/Vincent Alban
Vincent Alban/REUTERS
It also fell just two minutes and 54 seconds short of what appears to be the all-time record he set with his marathon CPAC address in March 2019.
The appearance was almost 12 minutes longer than his State of the Union address earlier this year, which was the longest in history at one hour, 47 minutes, and 49 seconds.
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But in Iowa, Trump spoke for at least 7 percent less of the time than during the SOTU address, according to Roll Call.
The president padded out his Iowa appearance with familiar grievances like transgender athletes, supposed “paid actors” interrupting his rallies, and calls for The New York Times to be prosecuted for its negative coverage of his second administration.
Polls have consistently shown voters are more concerned about his war of choice with Iran and its impact on already spiraling unaffordability across the country.
Those anxieties have driven Trump’s overall approval rating down to just 31 percent and helped Democrats gain an astonishing 9-point lead ahead of Tuesday’s race for control of the House and Senate.
The president even seemed aware at one point that his marathon appearance would likely attract criticism for how long it had already lasted.
“This isn’t rambling, this isn’t rambling, this is genius, if you want to know,” he told supporters.
Trump then framed his digressions as a deliberate “weaving” strategy to cover as much material as possible.
“You know what the weave is, right?” he said. “You’ll tell a story, and during the course of the story, you have other stories that relate to it.”
“You’ll be telling a story about the king of Saudi Arabia and then, ba-ba-ba-ba and the jets, and this, bing-ba-ba-ba, and it all comes back and then in the end, you get to the final point,” he went on.
“Now there’ll be a time when I don’t get to the final point,” he then admitted. “You could say it’s a ramble, but the way I do it, it’s pure freaking genius, OK?”
Trump told the crowds about three minutes later that he was done talking and bid them a goodnight.
But he then turned around, said he was joking, and kept speaking for another 39 minutes.
“It’s just going to on a little while longer,” the president said. “So I’ve done that three or four times, you know what the problem with doing that? The Secret Service goes crazy.”
He then launched into an unrelated aside about the NFL, describing football as “boring as hell” and revealing that “I hate that new kickoff rule where you hit the ball and people are standing there like a bunch of idiots.”
“The NFL should go back to a thing where you kick the ball, people get the ball, everybody’s running,” he went on.
“They have no right to ruin football by doing like that,” he added, before immediately launching off again about how “I signed a great big beautiful bill delivering the largest tax cuts in American history.”
Trump claimed at various other times during his address that he could have won the Vietnam War in a week despite his own “few week” conflict with Iran now having dragged on for more than eight months.
He also praised GOP Senate candidate Hinson for losing weight, bragged about passing elementary school-level cognitive tests, gave a deeply involved explanation of his cherished “Dumocrat” insult, and branched off with a lengthy diversion on the quality of White House flagpoles.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
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