Yeah, it reads very different once you add in the punctuation (from Snopes in this case), and the context of it being in the middle of a much longer response to the question:

"But we cannot let this ... we’ve never allowed any crisis from a Civil War, straight through to a pandemic in ‘17, all the way around -- in ’16 -- we have never, never let our democracy take second fiddle, we can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time protect the public health."

I still wouldn't portray it as great (particularly the years), but the meme makes it seem much worse than it is.

Edit: It's US political season, so we're going to see lots of stuff like this through next November. I'd suggest anyone that wants to minimize their political exposure add the names of candidates to their word filter list, and anything else you don't want to see.