A political journalist has weighed in on Bill Clinton‘s speech at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, sharing a theory about why the former president appeared to be referencing notes on paper, rather than reading a teleprompter.
Susan Milligan has covered politics for the New York Daily News and the Boston Globe among others, and was a 2010 fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School.
After Clinton’s speech, she posted on X, formerly Twitter, “Bill Clinton is reading not from a teleprompter, but pages of actual paper. Which, for those of us who started covering him in the ’92 campaign, means he didn’t finish his last version of his speech in time to load it on the teleprompter.”
Her post went viral, receiving over 1 million views and almost 30,000 likes. Many replies were from people who said they were attending the convention live and could see the teleprompter during Clinton’s speech, and he was not following its script.
Milligan followed up by saying that Clinton has a history of improvising or memorizing his speeches, referencing a 1994 address during which a teleprompter malfunctioned, as NPR previously reported.
According to CNN, Clinton decided to change his original speech after the first night of the DNC on Monday. An aide told the outlet that after the former president saw the energy and heard the speeches during the opening night, he decided to go “with a more fun, youthful, joyful approach.”
A similar switch-up was made to his speech at the 2012 DNC when he came to support the re-election of Barack Obama. NPR reported that his speech started with about 3,200 words and Clinton added another 2,300 which yielded some of his most memorable remarks of the evening.
While his speech at the DNC last night was a little more static than other speakers, his remarks especially those attacking the Republican candidate Donald Trump still resonated with the audience.
Clinton opened his speech by saying, “Two days ago I turned 78 – the oldest man in my family. And the only personal vanity I want to assert is that I’m still younger than Donald Trump.“
He joined other Democrats in attacking Trump’s age which comes after Republicans used Biden’s age against him during the campaign before the president stepped down from the race allowing Kamala Harris to take over as the nominee.
Clinton also joked about Kamala Harris’ beginnings when she worked at McDonald’s during her studies at Howard University, and referenced his own famous love for the burger chain, saying “She’ll break my record as POTUS who has spent most time at McDonald’s.”
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