On Saturday's AM Joy on MSNBC, host Joy Reid actually held a panel discussion in which the group likened Democrats negotiating with Republicans over the DACA and CHIP programs to having to negotiate with terrorists in a hostage situation.
After MSNBC terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance recalled that the situation resembles one in which the outlook is so hopeless that a SWAT team would be used, MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson likened Mitch McConnell to the Joker taunting Batman over which group of children to save from being killed.
After Reid introduced Nance by informing viewers that he was brought on board for the discussion because of his experience in the field of dealing with hostage takers, Nance quickly went for the hyperbole:
This is much more akin to a terrorist hostage taking as we've seen in some groups in the Middle East. They premeditated this. I mean, the CHIP program, they didn't reestablish months ago with the intention of using it as a bargaining chip -- and, if possible, killing it. Same thing with the DACA program.
He then brought up the SWAT team solution as he added:
So by putting the Democrats into this binary choice, there was never going to be a good outcome of that. As a matter of fact, at this point, that's when we would just use, you know, execute an assault and use a SWAT team to do a hostage rescue.
When Johnson -- also of The Root -- got his turn, he started making Joker comparisons:
When you know that the terrorist is going to kill the hostage, it makes it really hard to negotiate with them. This is like the Joker saying, "I've got a bus full of kids here and a bunch of orphans and nuns over there -- which one are you going to save, Batman?" But you know that he's going to try to kill them both.
He then added:
So, at the end of the day, the Democrats recognize that their best option is not to try to negotiate with crazy super villains, but actually to just come up with a plan and recognize that, at some point, the Joker or Mitch McConnell are going to get bored and they're going to recognize that this is harming us as well.
The lone Republican on the panel -- strategist Kirsten Haglund -- not surprisingly made no pushback against all the over the top analysis. She even declared that "the Democrats were right to do what they do," and called the behavior of Republicans "revolting."
