WATCH: Obama rips GOP establishment for letting Trump assault American democracy
On CNN Monday, in a sit-down interview with Anderson Cooper, former President Barack Obama laid bare how the GOP has enabled former President Donald Trump's ongoing assaults on democracy.
"I thought there were guardrails institutionally after Trump was elected, that you would have the so-called Republican establishment who would say okay, you know, it's a problem if the White House isn't — doesn't seem to be concerned about Russian meddling, or it's a problem if we have a president who is saying that, you know, neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, there are good people on both sides. That's a little beyond the pale. And the degree to which we did not see that Republican establishment say hold on time-out, that's not acceptable ... we're just letting Trump and others vent, and then suddenly you now have large portions of an elected Congress going along with the falsehood that there were problems with the election."
"And the leadership of the GOP briefly, for, you know, one night when they still had this sort of scent of fear in them going against the president—" said Cooper, recalling the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
"Then poof. Suddenly, everybody was back in line," said Obama. "The reason for that is because the base believed it. The base believed it because this had been told to them not just by the president, but by the media that they watch, and nobody stood up and said stop. This is enough. This is not true."
"I won't say nobody, let me correct it," Obama added. "There were some very brave people who did their jobs, like the secretary of state in Georgia, who was then viciously attacked for it, and all these congressman said you know what? I'll lose my job. I'll get voted out of office. Another way of saying this is, I didn't expect that there would be so few people who would say, well, I don't mind losing my office because this is too important. America is too important. Democracy is too important. We didn't see that."
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