MSNBC’s Joy Reid was back at it again, Saturday, shouting down a conservative guest when they talked about the facts she wants to remain hidden. This time she shouted down Alfonso Aguilar, the President of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, for daring to mention Planned Parenthood and Founder Margaret Sanger’s entrenched past in the eugenics movement. “Planned Parenthood is not a eugenicist organization,” Reid exclaimed loudly on AM Joy, “I think that is incredibly offensive.”
Reid had brought Aguilar onto her show to talk about Steve Bannon’s influence on the Donald Trump campaign, and Bannon’s deep connections with the alt-right movement. But Aguilar turned the tables on Reid when he shifted the conversation to a controversial figure Hillary Clinton openly associates herself with:
I think if we're going to play that same game, then we have to challenge Hillary Clinton, for example, when she says that she is an admirer of Margaret Sanger, for example, the founder of Planned Parenthood, an avowed eugenicist, who believed that people of color and unborn were undesirables. I mean, is she going to distance herself—
Reid didn’t appreciate that shot at Clinton, saying, “Alfonso, eh, with all due respect, Margaret Sanger is dead and not running the Hillary Clinton campaign,” before moving on to the other members of the panel.
But Aguilar would not let the facts rest. He brought it up again the next chance he had, and argued that it was a double standard that Clinton’s willful associations were not being scrutinized the way Trump’s were. “You’re mentioning a dead person for many decades,” Reid spat in frustration while trying to move away from Aguilar. As he started to talk about Planned Parenthood Reid tried to shut him up, exclaiming, “Planned Parenthood is not a eugenicist organization!” Reid followed up by claiming that Aguilar was somehow being “incredibly offensive.”
Shouting that a guest is being offensive to her seems to be a defense mechanism designed to keep facts that are damaging to liberals a secret. She did the same thing almost a month prior when she shouted down a guest for “inventing” the fact that there are roughly 33,000 missing e-mails from Clinton’s private server. She shouted the guest down saying, “You cannot say things — You’re putting out incredibly inflammatory information.”
Transcript below:
MSNBC
AM Joy
August 28, 2016
10:04:55 AM Eastern...
JOY REID: So Alfonso, how can the Republican Party, you know, going forward during this campaign and after, attract people of color, attract voters of color, people like you, you know, Latinos, African-Americans, when you have members of the white nationalist community openly embracing the candidate that you support?
ALFONSO AGUILAR: Let me first say that, you know, I'm a target. A regular target of the alt-right movement through some of their websites because of my support of immigration reform. They attack conservatives. Look, I don't think that Donald Trump knows what the alt-right movement is. And to try to suggest, as that commercial does or Hillary Clinton did in her commercial, that, you know, there are ties between him and the alt-right movement, is pretty ridiculous. It's a fringe, it's not that influential. They're fringes on both sides.
REID: But more influential now that Steve Bannon, who has declared that he made Breitbart.com a center for the alt-right. If you just go and scroll through Breitbart.com, it's a cesspool of alt-right, you know, hate speech. To make that person not just a part of the campaign but the CEO of the campaign, that is connecting himself directly, plugging himself into the alt-right. How can it not be?
AGUILAR: Well, I mean, I don't know about that. I think it's a remote association again –
REID: It’s remote, but he's the CEO of Donald Trump's campaign.
AGUILAR: But the question is, Donald Trump is the candidate. Donald Trump doesn't know anything about the alt-right movement. Donald Trump is not a racist. I mean, I think if we're going to play that same game, then we have to challenge Hillary Clinton, for example, when she says that she is an admirer of Margaret Sanger, for example, the founder of Planned Parenthood, an avowed eugenicist, who believed that people of color and unborn were undesirables. I mean, is she going to distance herself—
REID: Alfonso, eh, with all due respect, Margaret Sanger is dead and not running the Hillary Clinton campaign. You’re talking about a living person—
AGUILAR: But you’re associating yourself with Margaret Sanger.
[Goes to other panelists]
…
REID: And he's retweeted Alfonso, white nationalists. It’s not a coincidence, you know, normal people don't normally retweet over and over again white nationalists.
AGUILAR: I don't want to give the impression, by any measure, that I love Mr. Trump's comments, the comments he's made now or during the primary. I find many of those comments offensive. And yes, I think they have encouraged some of those groups, absolutely. To say that it was intentional, very well-organized, strategic, I think that's going a too far.
REID: He intentionally hired Steve Bannon. I do want to talk a little about Steve Bannon. He does control his own twitter account and he’s retweeting white nationalists. Which, if you’re following them and they’re somehow in the stream of your social media that is not normal.
AGUILAR: I would argue we can have a double standard. –
REID: That is not a double standard.
AGUILAR: Margaret Sanger. Let’s then talk—
REID: You’re mentioning a dead person for many decades.
AGUILAR: Planned Parenthood—
REID: Let’s move on for a second.
AGUILAR: Let me talk for a second.
REID: Planned Parenthood is not a eugenicist organization!
AGUILAR: 52 percent of all—
REID: I think that is incredibly offensive.
AGUILAR: 52 percent of all abortions—
REID: Good gracious!
AGUILAR: 52 percent of all abortions are performed on Latino and African-Americans—
REID: I think that smear on Planned Parenthood cannot go forward. We’re not going to continue with that line of questioning.
...
