Transcript
Barack Obama (0:00)
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Podcast Host (0:28)
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Barack Obama (0:57)
My inauguration had more people and that's demonstrable. I say that, by the way, not because, like, I don't care, but facts are important.
Podcast Host (1:16)
Former President Barack Obama brought the House down. This was one of the biggest speeches he has ever given thus far during the Trump regime. You heard him right there talking about objective facts. This all took place at the Connecticut Forum. Heather Cox Richardson was the moderator of this incredible event. I want to play for you some key portions of this event. You'll hear from former President Barack Obama. I really want to hear more from him in times like this because when he delivers these speeches, it is incredible. And the way he knows how to precisely go after Donald Trump and meet the moment is a skill that is really unique to former President Barack Obama. So let me share this clip with you right here. You're going to want to watch every minute of this. Let's play it.
Barack Obama (2:09)
We're also witnessing is that when the system is captured by those who, say, have a weak attachment to democracy are not. I don't even think that's a controversial statement at this point. No, I'm actually being serious now. It was a controversial statement. Now it is self acknowledged. I mean, if you follow regularly what is said by those who are in charge of the federal government right now, there is a weak commitment to what we understood, and not just my generation, at least Since World War II, our understanding of how a liberal democracy is supposed to work. And when I say liberal, I don't mean left. I mean liberal in the sense of believing in rule of law and independent judiciary and freedom of the press and freedom of assembly and protest and compromise and Pluralism, all those institutional norms and laws that were embodied in the Constitution imperfectly and then over time were expanded so that we had a basic understanding of like, I can't just be picked up on the street and hauled off to another country. That's not something, that's not, that's not, that wasn't a, that wasn't a partisan view. That wasn't a Republican or Democratic notion that that shouldn't happen. That was an American value and norm. And so, so what I believe continues to be that there has to be responses and pushback from civil society, from various institutions and individuals outside of government. But there also has to be people in government, in both parties who say, well, no, you can't do that, you can't do that. And what we're seeing right now is when you do not have those constraints and guardrails, right? When you don't have people inside of government who say, no, this is how the law works and we should follow it. Democracy is not self executing. It requires people, judges and people in the Justice Department and people throughout the government who take an oath to uphold the Constitution. It requires them to take those that oath seriously. And when that isn't happening, we start drifting into something that is not consistent with American democracy. It is consistent with autocracies. It's consistent with Hungary under Orban. It's consistent with places that hold elections but do not otherwise observe what we think of as a fair system in which everybody's voice matters and people have a seat at the table and there are checks and balances and nobody's above the law and we're not there yet completely. But I think that we are dangerously close to normalizing behavior like that. And we need people both outside government and inside of government saying let's not go over that cliff because it's hard to recover. And part of the reason I think it's interesting, when I was first elected, we were in the middle of a huge global financial crisis. It had started on Wall street. So understandably other countries were annoyed about it. And the Iraq war obviously was not popular around the world. And so our reputation and our leadership globally was, had dipped pretty significantly. And so I come in first year and I'm doing a lot of travel and making a lot of speeches and holding town halls and like this in foreign countries. And one of the raps that I got from the opposition, the Republican side, was he's on an apology tour. And basically what they were arguing was that I wasn't just going around bullying other countries and telling them that we're better than you, which I thought was a bad strategy to get them to cooperate to. That's human nature, I think. But what they always missed, and what I would always say everywhere I went around the world, was what makes America exceptional is not that it has the biggest military, it's not that it has the largest economy. What really makes America exceptional is that it's the only big country on earth and maybe the only real superpower in history that is made up of people from every corner of the globe. And they show up, they come here and, and, and the glue that holds us together is this crazy experiment called democracy. And this, this. This idea that we can somehow, despite all our differences, we don't look alike, we don't worship God in the same way, we don't like the same foods. And yet when this experiment works, it gives the world a little bit of hope because it says it is possible for human beings who are not bound by tribe or race or blood, but are instead bound by an idea that they can somehow work together and arrive at a common good. That's what made America exceptional. And so, and so I think we have to recover pride in that. That's what makes us special. That and our capacity through this constitutional process and representative government and an adherence to certain ideas has allowed us to get better. Not perfect, but get better over time, with just one big civil war. Large exception. But otherwise, we've managed to make real progress.