Wednesday on MSNBC, anchor Nicolle Wallace commented on former President Barack Obama’s speech on the third night of the Democratic convention.
Co-host Rachel 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, “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.”
Wallace said, “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 allowed Sen. 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.”
She continued, “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 theory that started the first day of the transition, when Donald Trump and his son tried to set up a backchannel to Russia to go around the intelligence community. By the way, there are a bunch of stars at the CIA from members of the intelligence community that died protecting this country’s national security. First thing that trump did when he won was to liken them to Nazis. So we cannot fathom the fury and the despair and the rage that every former living president — I’m going to out on a limb and say the dead ones, too, feel when they watch President Trump. And I’ve not seen any living president tap that well of despair and be vulnerable enough to share it with the country, but that my theory of the case of what President Obama did tonight.”
She added, “I think that this convention storytelling is second-to-none. I actually think that the stories they have told have built this drama that is Hollywood-like in its tension, in its despair, in its pain. I mean, to make the pain that we have all felt if you love this country to watch what Donald Trump has done do it has been searing, it has been gutting. And to make that part of the case to the country is risky, and, you know, we won’t know until election day if it works, but it is big, and it is painful, and it is raw, and I just think that this Obama speech was one for the ages.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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