Just hours earlier on Wednesday night, MSNBC hosts were getting emotional as they reminisced about past Barack Obama convention speeches. But after the Democrat addressed the 2020 gathering, the journalists at the network melted down over Obama’s warning of the coming “end of America,” should Donald Trump be reelected.
Rachel Maddow dramatically announced, “President Obama’s speech tonight slayed me.” She worried, “But his warnings 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.”
Joy Reid amped up the hyperbole, moving from the “end of American democracy” to a “warning about the potential end of America,” adding:
And that seems dramatic when people say it and people throw around if we have four more years of Trump the country will end. But there is a fundamental sense that if you break every institution that made it possible for there to be a Barack Obama, it will end.
Nicolle Wallace mind read what every former president supposedly believes:
I have a hunch that every living former president would speak from the same deep well of despair. Obama's speech shook me because of his despair laid bare. And if you had been the president you probably feel, you probably have a well of fury that started the first day of the transition.
But the most ridiculous moment came when Reid pretended to care about the fate of the Republican Party:
I've never seen anything like it. I say it all the time my mother is rolling in his grave. He was a Reaganite. He would never recognize what the Republican Party is now because it is in many ways an insurgency against America. It's an insurgency against every value that Republicans used to claim they held dear.
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A partial transcript is below. Click “expand” to read more.
MSNBC Democratic convention coverage
8/19/2020RACHEL MADDOW: President Obama's speech tonight slayed me. I’m sure people have different opinions. This is a different kind of thing from him. But his warnings 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.
JOY REID: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I'd like to cosign everything that Rachel Maddow just said because I agree. To go to President Obama for a moment I was lucky enough with EJ Dionne to write book about his speeches. 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 very 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. And that seems dramatic when people say it and people throw around if we have four more years of Trump the country will end. But there is a fundamental sense that if you break every institution that made it possible for there to be a Barack Obama, it will end.
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WALLACE: Let me jump in on the Obama speech first because I actually think that these speeches went together in an interesting way, and I think President Obama doing what he did allowed Senator Harris to do what she did, and I think that kind of coordination is not often executed the way it's been executed this week.
MADDOW: That's a good point.
WALLACE: Let me say this about Obama. I have a hunch that every living former president would speak from the same deep well of despair. Obama's speech shook me because of his despair laid bare. And if you had been the president you probably feel, you probably have a well of fury that started the first day of the transition.
...
REID: I've never seen anything like it. I say it all the time my mother is rolling in his grave. He was a Reaganite. He would never recognize what the Republican Party is now because it is in many ways an insurgency against America. It's an insurgency against every value that Republicans used to claim they held dear.
