Previewing Wednesday’s final presidential debate, MSNBC’s Joy Reid dismissed concerns about voter fraud as nothing more than those “who feel that black people are stealing our elections.” Reid appeared on a Hardball panel and attacked the issue as a “dog whistle to the far right.” She sneered, “It is feeding the Breitbart people who feel that black people are stealing our elections. That's all it is.”
Washington Post journalist Robert Costa eagerly agreed: “Joy’s right. Let's remember the history here. You go back to the Republican Party of the 1950s before William F. Buckley. You had this old right that would speak of things like globalists. There was the John Birch Society. What we're seeing a revival of the strand that has been part of the Republican past.”
A transcript of the exchange is below:
<<< Please consider helping NewsBusters financially with your tax-deductible contribution today >>>
Hardball
10/19/16
7:11[On voter fraud.]
JOY REID: The reason to bring it up and the reason that isn't just Trump that brings it up — Sorry. John Husted does the same thing when he is trying to undermine the opportunity to vote by making it harder and harder and harder. It is a dog whistle to people who want to believe that African Americans are cheating —
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Listen closely to this. Everybody listen to this.
REID: The dog whistle to the far right, the Breitbart crowd.
MATTHEWS: You mean when he says St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia. What do they have many common? Black majorities.
REID: Philadelphia and Chicago. It is feeding the Breitbart people who feel that black people are stealing our elections. That's all it is.
ROBERT COSTA: Joy’s right. Let's remember the history here. You go back to the Republican Party of the 1950s before William F. Buckley. You had this old right that would speak of things like globalists. There was the John Birch Society. What we're seeing a revival of the strand that has been part of the Republican past.
