Hours before the start of the virtual Democratic National Convention, Monday’s ReidOut featured more dangerously irresponsible rhetoric and conspiracy theories from MSNBC guests; suggesting that President Trump was destroying the Postal Service to rig the 2020 election, declare himself the winner, and has been taking calls and directives from authoritarian world leaders.
Worst yet, Russiagate conspiracy theorist Malcolm Nance and frequent cable news guest Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress suggested that, if worse comes to worse, Americans will have to take to the streets like in Belarus and try to remove Trump from office.
Host Joy Reid led the way with this mouthful near the top of her show, spinning a tale meant to cripple viewers into fearing that America was already in a casket and being lowered into the ground:
This year, however, Democrats are staging their convention against a candidate who better resembles an autocrat, an incumbent who has made clear he'll try to win by any means necessary. Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are leading an unprecedented assault on the pillars of our democracy. Whether rigging the U.S. Census, destroying the Postal Service or colluding with a third-party candidate, Trump is dismantling our democratic process before our very eyes.
Sure, the Postal Service has lost $78 billion since 2007, facing an $11 billion loss for 2020, and received a $10 billion loan through the CARES Act, but tell us more about how Trump’s working to kill it.
Bringing in her opening panel, Reid griped without evidence that Trump will “make it so that you physically cannot vote me out” and “break every means of you voting me out.”
Continuing on the theme of fear-mongering and lying, Nance stated Trump was installed by Russia, America’s indistinguishable from countries like Belarus, and that Trump has been “receiving calls” from “authoritarian leaders” on how to ensure he doesn’t leave office in January. Reid piled on by saying Poland’s recent election was illegitimate (click “expanded”):
NANCE: Right now, Belarus is a country that is in full-scale uprising against an authoritarian leader who was put in by Moscow who rigged his election and gave himself a modest 79.9 percent of the vote and now every business in Belarus is on strike. They just had a protest of millions of people. That country is probably going to go the way that Ukraine did, which is a people power revolution that will put him out because he obviously stole the vote, carried out secret police arrests in daylight, and used riot police to beat their own people. Does any of this sound familiar? Donald Trump is not taking notes. He is receiving calls, and he is executing policy that he believes that other authoritarian leaders will approve of, and then if he has to cheat and steal this election, he will steal it.
REID: And, you know, okay, we need to show these Belarus protests because this is nine days that there have been mass protests over these supposed results of this August 9 election, but it's not just there. It's Russia where suddenly Putin says he's going to be in till 2032. I don’t know if we have that video. There's Poland where Andrzej Duda pushed through with, you know, and won a recent election despite concerns it was not safe. Hungary where we know Viktor Orban, which a lot of — on the far right in the United States admire.
Reid told Tanden that Americans are “scare[d]” seeing as how the election was stolen in 2016, so it was important they all speak to “voters that are afraid that we're going to become Belarus.”
Giving away the game, Tanden asserted “the most important thing is that we have a free press so far that is actually telling us about the Post Office” and, additionally, “we can be prepared, and, you know, I am prepared for worse to happen before the election because Donald Trump is like a trapped animal.”
Tanden also made clear that Americans might have to take to the streets a la Belarus to throw out an authoritarian leaders if things worsen:
It's to essentially be large-scale voter suppression. Now, the most important thing is we're aware of this, we can respond and the most important for all of us to do is vote early. If the problem — the mail is a problem if you're voting late, but you can vote early. For those who are healthy, they can vote in person. Most important thing in this democracy still is that we have information that allows us to act and mobilize and organize and I hope we have the spirit this election like the people of Belarus do now, which is we don't need to go to the street just yet. We need to go to the voter polls. We need to vote in mass mobilization.
MSNBC’s purposeful fear-mongering has been brought to you by advertisers such as Fidelity, T-Mobile, and Volkswagen. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from August 17, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
August 17, 2020
7:01 p.m. EasternJOY REID: This year, however, Democrats are staging their convention against a candidate who better resembles an autocrat, an incumbent who has made clear he'll try to win by any means necessary. Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are leading an unprecedented assault on the pillars of our democracy. Whether rigging the U.S. Census, destroying the Postal Service or colluding with a third-party candidate, Trump is dismantling our democratic process before our very eyes. Over the past several days, he's been playing keepaway with the American voter saying, nope, you can't have mail-in voting as he and his Postmaster General slow down the mail to suppress the vote and he openly says that he wants to block money from the Postal Service to stop millions of mail-in votes from being counted.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP [on FBN’s Mornings with Maria, 08/13/20]: They want $25 billion for the Post Office because the Post Office is going to have to go to town to get these ridiculous ballots in. [SCREEN WIPE] Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.
REID: But he's also attacking the ballot dropboxes that voters could safely use to bypass the Post Office and cast their votes. So you can't do A and you can't do B. Good luck voting me out. Today he made the unfounded claim that ballot dropboxes could be subject to tampering asking, well, “who is going to ‘collect’ the Ballots, and what might be done to then prior to tabulation?” Trump continued to attack the Postal Service and vote by mail today in a series of events and interviews. Then he just went full George Orwell, claiming that he actually wants to “SAVE THE POST OFFICE,” the old break it by save it strategy and then Trump even topped that going for what you might call the full Putin, telling his supporters that the election won't be legitimate unless he wins.
TRUMP: Just make sure your vote gets counted. Make sure because the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. Remember that.
REID: [INTRODUCES PANEL] And Malcolm, you might've wondered by The ReidOut producers were calling you on night one of the convention, right? That's not a normal booking. As much as I love you and love talking with you, you're my friend, you're not really the first go-to guest I think people think about when it’s to election coverage, but we have a President here who's essentially saying I'm going to break every means to defeat me. I'm going to make it so that you physically cannot vote me out. I'm going to break every means of you voting me out and then he adds, oh, I also love to meet up with Putin — I think that’d be a nice thing before the November election, so you really were the right person to call. What do you think about all of this?
MALCOLM NANCE: Well, obviously he needs a life line, and, you know, he wants to have a face-to-face meeting with the guy who's been giving him all the hints on how to run things. Look, the United States is not going to be the first nation this year that's going to have trouble that's been engineered by Russia. Right now, Belarus is a country that is in full-scale uprising against an authoritarian leader who was put in by Moscow who rigged his election and gave himself a modest 79.9 percent of the vote.
REID: Yeah.
NANCE: And now every business in Belarus is on strike. They just had a protest of millions of people. That country is probably going to go the way that Ukraine did, which is a people power revolution that will put him out because he obviously stole the vote, carried out secret police arrests in daylight, and used riot police to beat their own people. Does any of this sound familiar?
NANCE: Yeah.
NANCE: Donald Trump is not taking notes. He is receiving calls, and he is executing policy that he believes that other authoritarian leaders will approve of, and then if he has to cheat and steal this election, he will steal it.
REID: And, you know, okay, we need to show these Belarus protests because this is nine days that there have been mass protests over these supposed results of this August 9 election, but it's not just there. It's Russia where suddenly Putin says he's going to be in till 2032. I don’t know if we have that video. There's Poland where Andrzej Duda pushed through with, you know, and won a recent election despite concerns it was not safe. Hungary where we know Viktor Orban, which a lot of — on the far right in the United States admire. I mean, Neera Tanden, you know, knowing that this already happened in 2016 — I think this is what scares a lot of people, right? It scares a lot of Americans that all of the effort and all that we're going through with COVID on top of everything else, so if they're just going to steal it, it's terrifying to a lot of people. So what would you say to voters that are afraid that we're going to become Belarus?
NEERA TANDEN: I think the most important thing is that we have a free press so far that is actually telling us about the Post Office. We — we can be prepared, and, you know, I am prepared for worse to happen before the election because Donald Trump is like a trapped animal. These polls are making him feel like a trapped animal. He feels like he's going to lose so he's striking out more and more and he's the most dangerous because he looks like he's losing and that — and he has a lot of power as President to dictate terms, so that is what the Post Office strategy is really about.
REID: Yeah.
TANDEN: It's to essentially be large-scale voter suppression. Now, the most important thing is we're aware of this, we can respond and the most important for all of us to do is vote early. If the problem — the mail is a problem if you're voting late, but you can vote early. For those who are healthy, they can vote in person. Most important thing in this democracy still is that we have information that allows us to act and mobilize and organize and I hope we have the spirit this election like the people of Belarus do now, which is we don't need to go to the street just yet. We need to go to the voter polls.
REID: Yeah.
TANDEN: We need to vote in mass mobilization.
(....)
7:13 p.m. Eastern
REID: And, Malcolm, I wonder if you could just walk through — you know, there are things that can be done in terms of messaging and in terms of tactics that can blunt what happened to 2016 now that we know — now that we, you know, now that we had your books out, we know what happened. What do you think messaging-wise Democrats need to do to explain to the country how to prevent another 2016?
NANCE: I’m so glad you asked me that because I spent a lot of time with information warfare experts and we discuss all of these meta-narratives that the Russians help craft and that the Trump campaign amplified with the use of Cambridge Analytics to create this meta-narrative in the 2016 campaign of Hillary evil, you know, B — and Donald Trump great guy, what do you have to lose, and Russia good. In this particular campaign as Neera said and Cornell said, you know, Joe Biden has his own meta-narrative that no one seems to be able to get around because you can't demonize him because they didn't spend 30 years doing that, so his meta-narrative is very, very good, which is, you know, save America, make America as great as it possibly can be. Donald Trump's is I hate everyone! [LAUGHTER] So we need to harness that meta-narrative and take it and we need to say this man crazy, America must be saved.
