Saturday's AM Joy on MSNBC displayed the latest example of the liberal news network's eagerness to bring the kind of Republicans onto their shows who will trash other Republicans.
While appearing as a guest to promote his book, The Truth Matters, former George H.W. Bush Treasury official Bruce Bartlett actually asserted that "virtually all racists belong to the Republican party today," and made a Nazi reference to Josef Goebbels as he attacked the right-wing media for supposedly misinforming conservatives.
Host Joy Reid seemed oblivious to her own news network's liberal bubble that generally excludes the kind if Republican analysts who preferred Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton as she fretted over the "conservative news bubble" and what can be done to help consumers of news who are trapped inside it:
You do also talk about the fact that there are two silos of information -- the conservative silo where they're getting their media from one place, and then everyone else getting their media from another. So how can people sort of protect themselves if they're inside that conservative news bubble?
Bartlett bemoaned that conservatives are not interested in being saved by the more liberal media as he responded:
I don't think they want to be protected unfortunately. I mean, you've got a huge number of people in this country who get virtually all of their news from Fox or they listen only to talk radio where you really only hear the right-wing point of view from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. And if they're looking on the internet, they're reading the Drudge Report or Breitbart in a closed loop where they never hear many facts.
He then got to the Nazi comparisons as he added:
They hear lies. And so when they hear the same lie over and over again, we know this is called the "big lie technique" that Josef Goebbels invented back in the 1930s. And unfortunately it works.
After reading from a tweet in which Bartlett declared that he would not vote for Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie because of "his pandering to racists and neo-Confederates," host Reid posed:
Is it just Donald Trump that's causing the Republican party to sort of, I don't know, cuddle up to or excuse this kind of neo-Confederate ideology that's crept into their base?
Bartlett absurdly claimed that almost all racists affiliate themselves with Republicans:
Well, you know, it's been said many times that not all Republicans are racists, but all -- virtually all racists belong to the Republican party today. And I'll make the point as well so that these people used to be Democrats. Democrats' party used to be the party of the South, and now the Republicans are the party of the South.
He added:
And a lot of people refuse to admit that there's been any change, but I feel sorry for establishment Republicans -- people like Ed Gillespie who I used to work with in the 1980s -- or Mitt Romney or any number of others who have to be silent. They're afraid to speak out in their own party for fear of being excommunicated.
But even liberal MSNBC host Chris Hayes last year admitted that, by the definition of "racism" common among liberals, polling suggests that a substantial portion of Hillary Clinton voters could be considered racist toward blacks.
Bartlett also seemed to assume that only whites could be considered racist and did not address whether some blacks who vote for Democrats are racist.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portions of the Saturday, October 28, AM Joy on MSNBC:
11:20 a.m. ET
JOY REID: Your new book -- which I've been reading through -- it sort of tries to disseminate for people sort of how to sort of protect yourself from fake news. But you do also talk about the fact that there are two silos of information -- the conservative silo where they're getting their media from one place, and then everyone else getting their media from another. So how can people sort of protect themselves if they're inside that conservative news bubble?
BRUCE BARTLETT: Well, I don't think they want to be protected unfortunately. I mean, you've got a huge number of people in this country who get virtually all of their news from Fox or they listen only to talk radio where you really only hear the right-wing point of view from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. And if they're looking on the internet, they're reading the Drudge Report or Breitbart in a closed loop where they never hear many facts.
They hear lies. And so when they hear the same lie over and over again, we know this is called the "big lie technique" that Josef Goebbels invented back in the 1930s. And unfortunately it works.
(...)
REID: You did tweet out -- and it might have been last night or this morning -- that you will not be able to vote for your old friend, Ed Gillespie, who's running for governor of Virginia. And your reasoning, you said, "His pandering to racists and neo-Confederates is reprehensible." That is another sort of really troubling Trumpian development, but is it just Donald Trump that's causing the Republican party to sort of, I don't know, cuddle up to or excuse this kind of neo-Confederate ideology that's crept into their base?
BARTLETT: Well, you know, it's been said many times that not all Republicans are racists, but all -- virtually all racists belong to the Republican party today. And I'll make the point as well so that these people used to be Democrats.
Democrats' party used to be the party of the South, and now the Republicans are the party of the South, and a lot of people refuse to admit that there's been any change, but I feel sorry for establishment Republicans -- people like Ed Gillespie who I used to work with in the 1980s -- or Mitt Romney or any number of others who have to be silent. They're afraid to speak out in their own party for fear of being excommunicated.
REID: Yeah, indeed. And this would be quite a time to speak out, given what's going on.
