CHICAGO — Former President Bill Clinton ridiculed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday night, calling him a narcissist preoccupied with petty concerns that have nothing to do with the everyday problems facing Americans.
During his speech at the Democratic National Convention, Clinton compared what he described as Trump’s fixation on crowd size to Vice President Kamala Harris’ focus on improving lives.
“In 2024, we have a pretty clear choice, it seems to me,” Clinton told a packed room at the United Center.
Harris is “for the people,” he said. “The other guy is about me, myself and I.”
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If Harris wins in November, she will become the first female president and break what Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” when she lost to Trump eight years ago.
As he addressed the primetime audience, Hillary Clinton looked on and applauded from the audience, standing between the couple’s daughter, Chelsea, and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
Bill Clinton’s speech was a flurry of self-deprecation. He nodded to his love of fast food and mentioned that Harris worked at McDonald’s when she was a student.
“I’m going to be so happy when she actually gets into the White House as president, because she’s going to break my record as the president who’s spent the most time at McDonald’s,” he said.
Clinton has spoken at every Democratic nominating convention since 1976, when Jimmy Carter was the party’s nominee. Never a concise person, he holds perhaps the dubious record of delivering the longest Democratic acceptance speech in the modern era. His 1996 speech lasted nearly 65 minutes.
This one was less than half as long, with a nostalgic feel. “I want to say this from the bottom of my heart,” said Clinton, who at 78 is two months younger than Trump. “I have no idea how many more of these I’ll be able to attend.”
Clinton, who was known for tinkering with his speech until it was finished, tore up his draft on Monday — the first day of the convention — and began reworking the speech from scratch, a source familiar with the speech’s preparations said.
With former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s adage, “campaign in poetry, govern in prose,” in mind, Clinton then worked to inject the speech with a more folksy flavor that also captured the enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy had generated, the source said.
But he also pilloried Trump, to the delight of a partisan public desperate to win this fall. Former President Barack Obama once called Clinton the “secretary of explaining things.”
Yet Clinton admitted that even he can’t explain Trump’s constant references in his campaign to Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal from the 1991 horror film The Silence of the Lambs.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”
After Clinton’s speech, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung attacked him in a statement.
“Bill Clinton is a total loser who is desperately clinging to any limelight he can get because no one cares what he has to say,” Cheung said. “The sad reality is that he, along with Crooked Hillary, is suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and has let it rot his brain to the point that he is a shell of a shell of the person he once was.”
Since winning the presidency in 1992, Clinton has had a volatile relationship with the American public. He defeated a Republican impeachment attempt in 1998 over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Voters have been forgiving. When he left office three years later, 56 percent of Americans had a positive view of him, compared with just 33 percent who had a negative view, according to NBC News polls.
But just two months later, Clinton’s approval rating had dropped 22 points in the aftermath of a series of questionable pardons he issued on his last day in office.
He tried hard to get his wife elected to the presidency in 2008 and 2016, but saw her fall short both times.
Now he’s ready to campaign for Harris in states where the election remains uncertain.
He could be positioned to support Harris among older voters, who credit him for the robust economy of the 1990s.
“If you vote for this team, if you let them elect you and let them bring this breath of fresh air, you will be proud of it for the rest of your life,” Clinton said. “Your children will be proud of it. Your grandchildren will be proud of it.”
“I’ll do my part,” he added. “You do yours.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
