Not long after the assassination attempt on former President Trump, MSNBC host Joy Reid made her X account private over the weekend, possibly to hide the incendiary anti-Rhetoric she spewed for years. So, the network’s Monday night coverage of the night one of the Republican National Convention was Reid first public comments on the shooting. Of course, they were vile. She expressed her “fear” that Trump would be allowed to “rewrite himself” as “a victim” because he was shot in the head.
Claiming she spoke to “civilians” and “professionals,” Reid suggested there was a “deep concern” and “fear” that the “media writ large…will acquiesce to trying to convince people that the things they have been experiencing for the last five, six years didn't happen.”
Reid proclaimed that the media need to be “the guardians of memory” and not allow Trump to “rewrite himself as both a hero and a victim” after surviving an assassin’s bullet passing through is right ear. She argued that Trump should be viewed as a victim because he was supposedly “the greatest purveyor and promoter of political violence really, you know, since anyone can remember, since George Wallace.”
A few minutes later, Reid essentially suggested the assassination attempt was Trump experiencing the boomeranging of the political violence he caused:
The one time I’ve ever been afraid doing this job, honestly, was in 2016, in Cleveland. When men – because it's an open carry state, Ohio – were pacing in front of our position with long guns, with AR-15s, in a way to menace us, as we were in our outdoor positions. They felt they needed to send a message to us visually with their firearms.
And I think about the people who have tried to vote in Arizona, when men with long guns were standing outside of those polling places to send them a message, “if you don't vote the right way, I'm here with this gun.” And so, the idea of political violence that we’ve been nursing really since then is so dangerous. It's so dangerous that you cannot avoid the consequences of it even if you're one of the people promoting it.
Between Reid’s grotesque comments, fellow MSNBC Rachel Maddow (who inspired the congressional baseball shooter who tried to assassinate multiple Republicans) insisted “motivations of the shooter [are] irrelevant.”
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s The Reid Out
July 15, 2024
7:07:22 p.m. Eastern(…)
JOY REID: I will say that the kind of universal kind of reaction that I'm getting – whether it's civilians or professionals – is really a deep concern and lack of confidence in – not us at this table or us at MSNBC but us as the media writ large. And a fear that what's going to happen now is that the Republican Party will do what they do. They're in the middle of a campaign. The convention started today.
But that the media will acquiesce to trying to convince people that the things they have been experiencing for the last five, six years didn't happen. That the greatest purveyor and promoter of political violence really, you know, since anyone can remember, since George Wallace, I think; that we just haven't experienced that kind of open, you know, sort of incitement of violence, or sort of luxuriating in the idea of violence. It's just not something we're used to anymore in American politics. Then we had to get used to that being a thing.
And people are concerned and expressing concern that we won't be the guardians of memory. And that we will allow Donald Trump as he is, you know, bathed in the glory and grandeur of his party, to rewrite himself as both a hero and a victim. That people who are the most vulnerable to not just the things he's done but the things he's promising to do, and that that will then happen without a guardian saying, “Wait, stop,” and that the media will acquiesce to this rewrite. And the people I have been talking to don't accept the rewrite.
(…)
7:09:59 p.m. Eastern
RACHEL MADDOW: We’ve had an incredible history of political violence in this country. But one thing that's true over time when you look back at that whole string, going all the way back to the 1800s, is that the motive of the person committing the violence is never relevant.
REID: Very true.
MADDOW: The act of violence itself ends politics, turns it over into crime, and makes the views and the motivations of the shooter irrelevant. Everybody in politics no matter where you are ideologically, must unite around the idea that violence is unacceptable.
(…)
7:11:43 p.m. Eastern
REID: And if I can very quick – I don’t want to monopolize the time, but, you know, the one time I’ve ever been afraid doing this job, honestly, was in 2016, in Cleveland. When men – because it's an open carry state, Ohio – were pacing in front of our position with long guns, with AR-15s, in a way to menace us, as we were in our outdoor positions. They felt they needed to send a message to us visually with their firearms.
And I think about the people who have tried to vote in Arizona, when men with long guns were standing outside of those polling places to send them a message, “if you don't vote the right way, I'm here with this gun.” And so, the idea of political violence that we’ve been nursing really since then is so dangerous. It's so dangerous that you cannot avoid the consequences of it even if you're one of the people promoting it.
(…)
