Going full Leeroy Jenkins, MSNBC’s ReidOut host Joy Reid and her A-block panel decided on Thursday night to flaunt their lack of brain cells, insisting Ma’Khia Bryant was someone whose “character” has been “demoniz[ed]” after having been murdered by a Columbus, Ohio police officer because she had “a bad day.”
They even went as far as suggesting Bryant’s use of a knife to attack another girl had been triggered by the presence of the officer and she may have had the knife “to defend herself” from the other girls. And this came 24 hours after Reid and another set of guests downplayed Bryant's attempted stabbing as something that happens plenty of times at schools where everyone comes out safe and sound.
Let’s try and get through this together. Reid pivoted to Bryant after having opened with the funeral of Daunte Wright and griped to far-left Rutgers professor Brittany Cooper that Americans have gone from showing compassion to George Floyd’s family to gleefully bragging that Bryant “deserved to die.”
Cooper turned up the gaslighting, insisting systemic racism was at work because Bryant’s death was proof “that black people have to be perfect in order for them to deserve dignity” from police and that Bryant was indeed killed because she wasn’t “being perfect” on Tuesday.
She added it’s an injustice if black women (like Bryant) aren’t allowed to “hav[e] a bad day” or be able to “defend ourselves when we think we are going to get jumped.”
In other words, Cooper argued Bryant was within her rights to both have a knife and wield it against someone else.
Cooper continued, excusing Bryant’s attempted murder because she was a minor (click “expand”):
[W]hat are we going to do the way we don't understand black girls as girls? Ma’Kiyah Bryant was a child like Tamir Rice was a child and the way she has been talked about as this, you know, because she was a big girl — right — and people see her as the aggressor of they don't see her humanity. They adultified her. We turn black girls into grown women before they even are even able to vote and unable to see them as children.
And so, I have watched folks across the political spectrum really defend this and say — and empathize with the officer, say that he didn't have any other set of choices. What are we training police to do if they are not actually showing up on the scene and making the situation better for all involved? If you can't figure out how to de-escalate a 16-year-old even with a kitchen knife when you’ve got a gun and you're a grown man, you shouldn't be a cop. That’s just it.
Reid picked up by doubling down on her insistence from Wednesday that, even with multiple camera angles, police need to share more information so we know “what happened beforehand” and even if that meant, in Reid’s world devoid of reason, Bryant was triggered by the presence of other women and/or the police officer and thought “she needed to defend herself.”
Showing her penchant for wanting to see a race war, Reid scoffed at the idea people defending the officer’s actions to save the lives of the other women, insinuating certain people (which could only be interpreted as white Republicans) don’t actually give one iota “about those two other black women.”
Center for Policing Equity co-founder and CEO Phillip Atiba Goff replied that the officer had “execut[ed]” Bryant and instead of inquiring about what happened before officers (and thus their body camera footage) arrived, the blame should be placed on elected officials (read: Republicans) who “made it okay to defund medical attention, to defund schools,” and “defund housing assistance.”
Goff expanded on his farcical stupidity, accusing critics of “demoniz[ing]” Bryant’s “character” when she was someone who was having “a bad experience” while “in foster care.”
He concluded by agreeing with Cooper and Reid that perhaps Bryant was “scared” and “engaged in potentially protecting herself,” leaving the need to be “holding the police accountable” as the real issue.
Reid and activist, MSNBC host, and race hustler Al Sharpton took things in an even more dramatic direction as they insisted on the evening of what they claimed was a double standard of police shooting dead black suspects while keeping white assailants alive (click “expand”):
REID: Here is the thing, Rev. The thing is that, by definition if police are being called, then something has taken place that is either criminal, right, or is either frightening to someone in the community. And that's whether the person is white or black. So don't give me the, you know, police didn't have a choice. If they're being called to a situation where they believe a crime is committed, that's true whether the person is white or black. But we have seen police tussle with and beg white defendants who even have a gun, who even have a knife, because in that case too somebody was called because something was criminal, and they seem to have figured out an alternative to killing that person. Kyle Rittenhouse, the police knew he just shot two people. They knew he was behind it.
SHARPTON: Kyle —
REID: They figured out something else to do.
SHARPTON: — Kyle — Kyle — Rittenhouse is the best example. Here’s a man who had killed two people and was armed and they were able to take him, full health and no bodily harm at all. When you look at the data, that is why we are challenging the U.S. Senate. The data shows that they handle whites that are violent, that are criminal, that have even in many ways threatened the bodily harm on police, and they don't kill them. Why is it for any excuse at all they end up doing this when they're black or brown? It is something that we cannot tolerate. It is something that we have to deal with as the civil rights issue of today. We need the federal government to step in and start acting like they promised. We stood up and voted as a community in unprecedented numbers and put Democrats in the White House, in the Senate and in the House. Now it is time for you to return our investment of protecting our lives against bad cops. We’re not saying all cops are bad, but stop acting like all blacks are bad and out of control and the only thing you can do is execute them before a trial and a jury.
Did they just make a case for police officers shooting white suspects dead when taken into custody because, in their twisted world, police already do that for African-American perpetrators?
As our friend Ryan Girdusky tweeted in reaction to this segment, it begs the question: “If police don’t take black Americans into custody... how are there any black Americans incarcerated for violent crime?”
This MSNBC panel’s defense of stabbings and insistence that people of certain skin colors shouldn’t be shot if they’re having a bad day was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as AT&T, ClearChoice, Farmer’s Insurance, and Sandals. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from April 22, click here.
