them back. this is american voices. hello, everyone i m julio castro in for alicia menendez. we begin this hour with president trump s rage against democracy. and those calling it what it truly is, a danger to democracy. saturday in wilkes-barre, pennsylvania, trump ranted for more than two hours at a rally for pennsylvania s gubernatorial candidate doug mastriano and gop senate candidate doctor oz. it was the former guy s first public rally and speech since the fbi search at mar-a-lago last month. as you can imagine, it quickly devolved into nothing more than a tirade against the man who beat him, president joe biden. he called biden an enemy of the state and the fbi and the department of justice, vicious monsters. well it s pretty much always the case, trump is clearly more angry at biden-than-normal after biden gave a primetime speech last week and philly, trying a clear line between maga and mainstream republicans. and this morning, just hours after donald trump muddy t
of his predecessor although he s done that. but for him, this has become a mission it feels like. should be a mission for all of us. look at what he laid out there, these are the common assumptions of what it means to live in a democracy. there s a peaceful transfer of power, all those things have been blown up in the last few years. so building it back is always more difficult and more important than destroying things which is easy. so that s why you have to bring the conversation as he did but frankly needs to lean in more about civic situeducation. civic education. why isn t that a key thing we teach our kids in school? it was that last line did you have civics? i had a civics class in high school? i think not. i m old. the context of where we are now with our democracy. civics education got folded into social studies. yes.
the midterms, it was all about inflation, economy, crime, this has nothing to do on that. so i requested is this what voters what? he said, look, 92% of the republican conference is not on the oversight committee so they re focused on those other issues clearly top of mind for voters and this will be a focus of the oversight committee and they ll be able to walk and chew gum at the same time so they ll look at other issues as well. the american people are dealing with a lot of things i m not sure this is one of them. thank you. one thing that complicates those efforts is the small majority that republicans have in the house. former president barack obama is weighing in on the midterms and the outcome. he warned about threats to democracy on the campaign trail. last night speaking with trevor noah he praised his party for defeating a lot of election deniers. because of some really concerted efforts in a lot of important states. some of the most egregious,
musk s changes drawing not just scrutiny from critics on capitol hill really from everywhere. listen. i wasn t sure that he understood the role that twitter plays in our society. i wasn t sure that he understood that compared to rocket science, democracy is much more complicated. that is massachusetts senator ed markey. cnn s oliver darcy joins us with his reporting. i think everyone wants the buzz headlines, what is elon musk doing to twitter, can you believe this? it s unreal. the reality is the critical role it plays in the democracy and around the world, by the way, in other places where there are auta authoritarian regimes. this can disrupt communications for a lot of people. world leaders are on twitter and now death is in the air on twitter. yesterday, last night, the top
important as citizens but also as civic leaders to focus on solutions to defending democracy. that s what this conference was about and frankly needs to be more about. but president obama in his speech did put forward some concrete ideas and that s a relief. we don t talk enough about solutions. seems like it was a dire warning about democracy. listen to this and then respond to it. what s being challenged are the foundational principles of democracy itself. the information to that all citizens have a right to freely participate in selecting who governs them. the notion that votes will be counted. and the party that gets more votes wins. that losers concede. that power is transferred peacefully. that the winners don t abuse the machinery of government to punish losers. and we re going to have to figure out how to live together or we will destroy each other. that s not a direct criticism