Joy Reid Wrongly Claims More Anti-Obama Threats, Lauded as 'Great Intellectual'

September 30th, 2017 9:56 PM

Appearing as a guest on Friday's All In with Chris Hayes, far-left MSNBC host Joy Reid was spreading misinformation to viewers as she claimed that President Barack Obama "had more threats against him than any President" even though the claim was discredited years ago. And, on her own show on Saturday's AM Joy, liberal guest Frank Schaeffer laughably lauded her as a "great public intellectual."

On Friday's All In show, during a discussion of the travel habits of Trump administration officials and the cost to taxpayers, after Hayes brought up the issue of security costs, Reid inserted the debunked myth into the conversation:

I mean, don't forget, we just got finished having the first black President of the United States, who had more threats against him than any President -- than any of his predecessors, And, look, this is an administration that, at the same time, they're jet-setting around the country on luxury planes, is also plotting to cut their own taxes by billions and billions of dollars. It starts to look like the monopoly men are laughing at the Republican base. The only question is whether the Republican base can see them laughing.

On Saturday's AM Joy, as the group discussed Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore, guest Schaeffer -- known for being a critic of the religious right which his father was a part of -- derided Judge Moore as behaving like a "fascist." Schaeffer: "When you see Judge Moore pull out a gun at a public rally, that is a threat. This is the act of a fascist -- this is not American -- people don't do this."

He then took a moment to lavishly bestow praise on fellow liberal guest, the Reverend William Barber, and host Reid, as he added:

I just say that being on with Reverend Barber, who I last saw at a progressive Christian meeting that he and I were at together, is a great honor today. I consider him America's first public intellectual and the most moral voice we have -- that said -- and by the way, Joy, I feel the same about you. It's a great honor to always be with you. You are a great public intellectual with a tremendous stand.

A bit later, he claimed that Republicans are being more open about being "racist" and "white supremacist," whereas in the past, Republicans like Jack Kemp and the Bushes had "pretended" not to be:

The cat is out of the bag. We are now into a new era where the people who are holding these views -- anti-gay, homophobic, racist, white supremacist -- they aren't even pretending anymore to be mainstream. Look, the old Republican oligarchs back in my day like Jack Kemp and the Bush family we knew personally -- they at least pretended -- they didn't go on national television or tweet in the morning..

He soon intoned: "I just want to say -- as someone who helped build the religious right as the nepotistic sidekick of my father back in the '80s -- what we started has now gone beyond the wildest dreams of anybody who was involved with that."

Also of note, a few days ago on the Thursday, September 28, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Reid delivered more over the top liberal analysis as she claimed that Republicans want to "reinstitute feudalism" with their tax plan, and that, as NFL players want to protest against police officers "killing blacks with Impunity," some Trump voters want to see black athletes stand and play sports "because I say so" as she went into an emotional rant.