Maddow: Obama’s Warning About End of American Democracy ‘Scared Me’

Wednesday on MSNBC, anchor Rachel Maddow commented on former President Barack Obama’s speech on the third night of the Democratic convention.

Maddow said, “President Obama’s speech tonight slayed me. I’m sure people will have different opinions about it because it’s a different kind of thing. His warnings that we could potentially be at the end of American democracy scared me, and I found upsetting and hard to watch. But it’s powerful. Powerful stuff.”

Co-host Joy Reid said, “So President Obama can be a poet. There’s a kind of speech he gives — particularly his eulogies — that are all poetry and take you through these emotional chords of American history. He’s a writer, so he speaks as a writer and participates in writing his speech, which is unusual for a politician. And he has this poetic and almost dramatic sort of sense. That was not the kind of speech he gave tonight. This was President Obama saying, ‘I sat in that office, and I want you to listen to me because I’m warning you because I know it from inside the job that there’s a danger here.’ This was the speech that Obama has given throughout all of the speeches I’ve read or watched that absolutely did feel like the most of a warning. And I think it was warning about the potential end of America.”

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