Author and historian Jon Meacham shared his reaction Thursday to former President Barack Obama’s speech the night before at the Democratic National Convention. In endorsing Democratic presidential nominee and his former Vice President Joe Biden, Obama called President Donald Trump a threat to the United States’ democracy.
Meacham, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” praised Obama for his speech slamming Trump, saying he took an “intelligent” and “wise high road.”
“I know everybody’s talking about how blistering or whatever the analogy — how tough [Obama] was on Trump. Really? Was he?” Meacham asked. “I mean, Trump rose to national power by deploying baseless, disproven, racist attacks against this man. I thought, if anything, Obama took an intelligent high road, a wise high road here. And just says what a lot of us think. And that’s what a great political oratory is about: Can you articulate what we’re thinking?”
“So, the net effect of both Senator Harris’ speech and President Obama’s speech, I think, is just to say we know this isn’t working. You know this isn’t working,” he added. “And we hope, you know, a lot of folks hoped — I know I did — President Obama just said he did, that, you know, maybe miraculously this carnival barker would be transformed by the office. He was not. Instead of being transformed by the office, Donald Trump has attempted to transform the office and the country into something we shouldn’t want to be. And here we have a chance, in 76 days, to fix it. I think that was the message, and I think that was very effective.”
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