How Trump’s inauguration speech length compares to previous presidents’
This story first appeared in NPR’s live blog of Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, where you can find more coverage and context from the day.
President Trump’s second inauguration speech was almost exactly twice as long as the address he gave after being sworn into office the first time.
The president spoke for about 30 minutes in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, pledging that the “golden age of America begins right now” and outlining the actions he plans to take on everything from immigration to energy to gender identity.
His speech was 2,885 words, compared to 1,433 in 2017, according to the American Presidency Project. See how previous presidents compare:
After his inaugural address, Trump moved to the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center where he addressed a room full of supporters with more informal, off-the-cuff remarks — including taking swipes at Democratic politicians and repeating false claims about the 2020 election. Those remarks lasted a few minutes longer than his inauguration speech.
Inaugural addresses — which all but five presidents have given — have ranged considerably in length over the years.
George Washington’s second inaugural address was the shortest — he delivered a mere 135 words in March 1793, in a speech lasting less than two minutes.
William Henry Harrison’s 1841 speech was the longest, clocking in at 8,460 words and taking 1 hour and 45 minutes to deliver on a particularly blustery day. He died exactly a month into his presidency of pneumonia, the result of a cold that many believed he caught outside on the day of his swearing-in.
Harrison’s speech was some 3,000 words longer than that of the runner-up, William Taft — who, incidentally, is the only person who has both taken and administered the presidential oath.
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