Using teleprompters, Donald Trump delivers a speech about his vision for foreign policy on April 27, in Washington. | Getty Trump and the teleprompter: A brief history 'We should outlaw teleprompters … for anybody running for president,' says Trump, who has adopted the technology.

Donald Trump used a teleprompter Tuesday night to deliver one of the most important speeches of his campaign so far. But the presumptive GOP nominee has not always been so fond of teleprompters, which don’t fit well with his popular off-the-cuff speaking style.

“In Crooked Hillary's telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!” Trump tweeted on June 3, after Clinton delivered a bruising indictment of Trump’s foreign policy.


"Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesn't even look presidential!” Trump tweeted the day of Clinton’s speech.

“She’s just reading it off a teleprompter. Believe me, they write that for her,” Trump said of Clinton in March.

Clinton “has the biggest teleprompters I’ve ever seen,” Trump said at a Massachusetts campaign rally in January.

“I don’t use teleprompters,” he said in that speech.

But Trump’s disdain for teleprompters is not confined to Clinton’s use of them.

"I've always said, if you run for president, you shouldn't be allowed to use teleprompters,” Trump said in October. "Because you don't even know if the guy is smart."

He used the teleprompter attack on his primary opponents in the opening months of the campaign.

"These other guys, they're going around, they make a speech in front of 21 people. Nobody cares, they read the same speech…They have teleprompters,” Trump said at a campaign rally in August 2015. "I say we should outlaw teleprompters … for anybody running for president.”

Tuesday night’s speech was not the first time Trump turned to the teleprompter. He used one when delivering a foreign-policy speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“I’ve started to use them a little bit,” he said during his May address to the National Rifle Association. “They’re not bad. You never get yourself in trouble when you use a teleprompter. You know the problem is, it’s too easy. We have a president who uses teleprompters, it’s too easy. We should have non-teleprompter speeches only when you’re running for president, you find out about people. The other way you don’t find out about anybody."

