MSNBC’s The ReidOut host Joy Reid added a new descriptor to her many titles (including anti-Semite, homophobe, and liar) on Tuesday’s show: China apologist. During a rant that reveled in the R-rated Lil Nas X video and Satan-themed Nike sneakers as a way to own Christians, Reid ruled that opposition to thing such as Lil Nas X’s sexuality, transgenderism, and even China’s communist government would encourage violence against Asian Americans and LGBT people.
Reid could barely contain her excitement as she began her “Absolute Worst” segment:
Who run the world? Well obviously Lil Nas X. Duh. This week, he broke Twitter again, plus the Internet and right wing brains with his new video Montero, Call Me By Your Name, in which he perfects certain pole dance moves, including one of which he’s, like, upside down, impressive. And also twerks on the devil before killing him. Natch.
She boasted that the song was “a bop” for having been an “obvious and artistic play on the conservative Christian idea that people who are gay will go to hell” before pivoting to more giddiness over how “the right has lost the culture wars, decisively, like a generation ago,” but has moved onto “fixating on a new boogie man — well, a boogie kid, meaning trans youth.”
And it came on the eve of Holy Week! Imagine if a rapper did this with Islam right before Ramadan.
Going postal over the idea that anyone would “deny gender-affirming care for trans minors” and ruin women’s sports with people who were born male, Reid said Christians and conservatives should not only accept it, but assist in gender reassignment surgeries even if it violates their conscience because the number of transgender people is, according to Gallup, less than one percent of U.S. adults.
To further construct her strawman, she said if the right actually cared about women’s sports, they would support things like the equal pay movement
Reid then argued that “the outrage isn’t real” because it’s “performative” nonsense by the right to amass “political power” and similar to their “draconian voter suppression laws” in that it’s all about “cheating” to win elections.
All together, Reid said the last year has “reveal[ed]” that Republicans have “no ideas that people would want to vote for.”
As for what GOP actually supports, Reid argued that it’s violence in and of itself because standing up to China leads to hate crimes, opposing transgenderism equals bullying, and supporting legal immigration was xenophobic:
Demonizing China over COVID has produced actual violence against Asian people. Demonizing trans kids gets them actually bullied and harassed. Demonizing immigrants makes it politically impossible to pass common sense laws to solve a generations-long issue. I could go but here is the bottom line — useless drama, it does have consequences, sometimes violent consequences. And it is the absolute worst.
In other supports, you support Joy and Satanism, or you support violence. How Alinsky-like.
This support for communist, concentration camp-building China and campaign against Christians was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as Fidelity, LegalZoom, and Qunol. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from March 30, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
March 30, 2021
7:40 p.m. Eastern [TEASE]JOY REID: And still ahead, the White House announces new initiatives aimed at addressing the recent surge in anti-Asian violence. And what’s really behind the phony right wing freak out over Lil Nas X and transgender kids playing sports. The answer is tonight’s absolute worst.
(....)
7:45 p.m. Eastern
REID: Who run the world? Well obviously Lil Nas X. Duh. This week, he broke Twitter again, plus the Internet and right wing brains with his new video Montero, Call Me By Your Name, in which he perfects certain pole dance moves, including one of which he’s, like, upside down, impressive. And also twerks on the devil before killing him. Natch. The song, which is a bop, is on obvious and artistic play on the conservative Christian idea that people who are gay will go to hell, which Nas does literally in the video and he amplified the medium by releasing these Satan-themed custom sneakers, 666 of them which sold out in less than a minute. The right wing outrage was entirely predictable and proves that Lil Nas X knows his enemies better than they know him, tweeting: “Y’all love saying we going to hell but get upset when I go there.”
It comes at the time when the right has lost the culture wars, decisively, like a generation ago, including among their own kids, fixating on a new boogie man — well, a boogie kid, meaning trans youth. Republican legislatures in more than two dozen states are pushing through bills that take the 2016 bathroom bills to a new level. The measures would prevent trans kids from playing K-12 sports, deny gender affirming care for trans minors, or create religious exemptions that could deny LGBTQ people medical treatment at all, if medical providers or pharmacists voice a religious objection. But like the Republican freak out over wokeness or how they frame the Democrats’ voter convenience bill as literally demonic, or, like, flip out over Lil Nas X or Megan Thee Stallion, which they’re watching repeatedly clearly, it’s all fake outrage. According to one recent Gallup poll, 0.6 percent of the American adult population is transgender. But we don’t know the real number for a host of reasons. Still, that is a tiny community of fellow human beings. Certainly not enough for an alleged take over of girl sports by transyouth. If these right wingers cared so much about girls sports, then why aren’t they advocating for women athletes to get equal pay and decent gym facilities that match what the men have?
So, if the outrage isn’t real — which it isn’t — what is it really about? The usual, political power. It’s the same reason Crocodile Cruz and his jungle safari friends are beclowning themselves at the border. It’s purely performative, an effort to inspire their dejected Trumpy voters to stick with the program by promising to hurt the people they fear, just the way Trump did. Polling shows that in the wake of their golden calf defeat in November, and Democratic victories in Georgia, one in five Republicans report being less motivated to vote in future elections versus just five percent of Democrats, which explains why the Republicans are advancing draconian voter suppression laws designed to make it harder for their opposition to vote, because in order to keep their base engaged, they have to essentially promise conservative voters that they will win even if it means by cheating. The same goes with anti-trans laws and the border freak out. The culture wars are not about culture. They’re about keeping right wing Christians engaged and voting Republican and what better than a fake, stolen election or racializing the coronavirus or losing your marbles over a handful of trans junior high school softball players to help you avoid revealing that your part actually has no ideas that people would want to vote for.
And if this was just, like, consequence-free performative nonsense, it would — it would just be damned. But it’s not consequence free. Demonizing China over COVID has produced actual violence against Asian people. Demonizing trans kids gets them actually bullied and harassed. Demonizing immigrants makes it politically impossible to pass common sense laws to solve a generations-long issue. I could go but here is the bottom line — useless drama, it does have consequences, sometimes violent consequences. And it is the absolute worst.
