'It scared me’: Maddow unnerved by Obama warning about potential ‘end of American democracy’

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow confessed that there were parts of President Barack Obama's speech that genuinely "scared her."

"President Obama's speech tonight slayed me," said Maddow. "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 explained that Obama would know the facts because he not only has been in the Oval Office for eight years, but he also sat in that office with President Donald Trump when his staff was trying to get a secret line to call Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"So President Obama can be a poet," said Reid. "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."

She said that it may seem dramatic, and it's something people throw around, but that Trump has basically worked to end every institution that helped ensure someone like Obama could be elected. If Trump kills that, then America as we know it will end.

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