Trump compared to Fidel Castro by CNN, MSNBC after lengthy acceptance speech
Multiple political commentators and reporters compared former President Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention to the speaking style of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Castro, who died in 2016, gave famously long speeches, including remarks in 1960 that went for 4 hours and 29 minutes at the United Nations. Trump spoke for about 92 minutes in a primetime nomination acceptance speech Thursday that went past midnight.
"Somewhere in hell, Fidel Castro is jealous," CNN's Paul Begala said Friday.
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"This was Castrolean in length," MSNBC host Alex Wagner said on Thursday. "Michael Beschloss pointed out that [former Soviet Premier Nikita] Khrushchev and Castro tended to give long stem-winders, kind of incoherent ones, as they were aging, and it's symptomatic of a party that indulges in a cult of personality that has put all its chips on the persona of one individual and their frailties and strengths."
MSNBC host Joy Reid said that she Googled the length of Castro's longest speech during Trump's nomination remarks for comparison.
"He didn't quite get there," Reid said of Trump's speech length. "7 hours and 10 minutes at the Communist Party conference in Havana in 1986."
Some political commentators reacted online to Trump's speech, also invoking the historical record of Castro's long, winding speaking style.
"ChatGPT, produce a speech of Donald Trump rambling with random anecdotes and shout outs to the crowd that lasts longer than the average Fidel Castro speech circa 1975," Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson wrote on Thursday.
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Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung called out MSNBC's reporting on the former president's speech in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"These idiots either have a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome or [are too] stupid to realize what an inspiring speech President Trump gave at the convention," Cheung said.
"But we shouldn't expect more from dumba---- who weren't even at the convention and tried to deceive viewers by reporting from a television set in New York that was made to look like they were in Milwaukee," he wrote.
Rachel Maddow and other top MSNBC hosts used an LED screen to cover the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee from the liberal network's studio in New York City this week. The network had other hosts and reporters who were on-site, however.
Fox News' Yael Halon contributed to this report.