On Monday afternoon, just a couple of hours before her new MSNBC evening show, Joy Reid was demonstrating her propensity to demonize Republicans while injecting race into anything as she made a tortured comparison between those who defend President Donald Trump's coronavirus response and racists who supported segregationist Democrat Bull Connor in the 1960s.
At 4:40 p.m. Eastern, after Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace alluded to a speech by former Congressman John Lewis in which the Georgia Democrat tried to get Republicans to support impeaching President Trump, she recalled a report in the New York Times alleging that some Republican governors meet secretly to discuss the pandemic to bypass the Trump administration.
Reid responded by bringing up the recent passing of Civil Right activist C.K. Vivian and invoked 1960s segregationists:
JOY REID: It literally boggles my mind that grown men and women have to sneak around and meet to save the lives of their own constituents because they're afraid that Donald Trump will be mad at them if they save people's lives. This is insane, and, you know, John Lewis died only a few hours after C.T. Vivian, who was another hero of the Civil Rights Movement.
She added:
And there's this video of C.T. Vivian confronting not Bull Connor, but a guy who's standing near Bull Connor and who's espousing the same but who's silent. And he says to him, "Why are you following him? Why are you letting him drag you into the pit of hell -- dragging you into the worst depths of history? You are -- he's dragging you toward Nazism. Why are you letting him do that? You need to man up and walk away from him," you know.
She then suggested that Republican support for President Trump would lead to deaths:
And John Lewis was crying out to Republicans, "You can walk away from him. You don't have to do this," you know. The idea that you would -- I think about the Florida governor almost every day because I still have so many friends down there. "You really would rather let people die than defy this one man?" He's not God -- he's just a man. But the cowardice you can see on the Hill right now -- and you talk about this all the time, Nicolle -- out of Republicans is shocking when there are lives at stake.
She went on to laud gun control activists who pushed for more gun laws after the Parkland school shootings, garnering agreement from host Wallace.
This episode of MSNBC's Deadline: White House was sponsored by ServePro and American Express. Their contact information is linked.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, July 20, Deadline: White House on MSNBC:
Deadline: White House
7/21/2020
4:40 p.m. Eastern
NICOLLE WALLACE: The sound we played was from impeachment. I remember -- I think I was anchoring when that happened -- and you could almost put that frame around literally everything that's happening. I mean, there I think he was saying to his Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate, "Just look at what we can all see. The abuse of power is in front of all of you -- just do the right thing. Do the right thing for your kids -- for your family."
How do we get back to that? How do we crawl back to -- we are so far from that. The New York Times reporting this weekend about a secret society of governors who have to meet without staff to bypass all the disinformation and incompetence coming from the federal government. I mean, we're so far from what he called for just in December.
JOY REID; No, and it's -- I was listening to that statement, and it literally boggles my mind that grown men and women have to sneak around and meet to save the lives of their own constituents because they're afraid that Donald Trump will be mad at them if they save people's lives. This is insane, and, you know, John Lewis died only a few hours after C.T. Vivian, who was another hero of the Civil Rights Movement.
And there's this video of C.T. Vivian confronting not Bull Connor, but a guy who's standing near Bull Connor and who's espousing the same but who's silent. And he says to him, "Why are you following him? Why are you letting him drag you into the pit of hell -- dragging you into the worst depths of history? You are -- he's dragging you toward Nazism. Why are you letting him do that? You need to man up and walk away from him," you know.
And John Lewis was crying out to Republicans, "You can walk away from him. You don't have to do this," you know. The idea that you would -- I think about the Florida governor almost every day because I still have so many friends down there. "You really would rather let people die than defy this one man?" He's not God -- he's just a man. But the cowardice you can see on the Hill right now -- and you talk about this all the time, Nicolle -- out of Republicans is shocking when there are lives at stake.
John Lewis was literally 17 years old when he started defying the police who could kill him in the street. He was 23 when he got up in front of 250,000 people and spoke before the march on Washington. King didn't even make 40, and he laid down his life for his country. When he was 26, John Lewis, when he got beaten in the head. These were basically kids, and they had more courage than a member of Congress or the Senate. The kids in Florida, you know, who marched against gun violence after they faced a gunman in school. They were like 17. I met those kids -- those kids had the spirit of John Lewis, the Parkland kids. These men in Congress -- these women in Congress -- how dare they risk people's lives because they think Trump will be mad and he'll tweet at them? It's pathetic.
WALLACE: It sure is.
