Thursday’s ReidOut served as yet another performance in the theater of the absurd with host Joy Reid calling “globally-respected” former President Barack Obama “Batman” who emerged at the funeral of Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) to give “a treatise on American democracy, a rousing call to arms” against the “Joker.”
To further play up the Joke analogy, Reid bemoaned Trump for continuing to carry out a “made for TV federal invasion of Democratic cities.”
And to make sure she checked the box of spreading conspiracy theories, she ruled that Senate Republicans shouldn’t be trusted when they expressed genuine disagreement with Trump’s ponderance about delaying the November 8 election.
With Obama’s partisan screed having been delivered hours earlier, Reid was in a great mood as she began the show with this eye-rolling drivel:
Donald Trump is terrified and he has good reason to be. Today the one who triggers him more than any human being Earth, former President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama gave a power eulogy for the late and great, George Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. And in doing so, Obama delivered a treatise on American democracy, a rousing call to arms, that could herald a blue wave this November.
Following a lengthy Obama soundbite, Reid gloated that “Trump was so triggered by the reemergence of the popular, globally respected 44th President on the national stage, the Batman to his Joker” that he added a press conference hours later.
Reid made sure to repeatedly harp on the upsetting GDP drop of roughly 33 percent (without the context of it being an annualized rate while Q2 was 9.5 percent) as something that Trump “owns,” as if to suggest someone else as president would have scared the coronavirus from our shores or pandemic status.
“The coronavirus still rages out of control, including in the very states that Trump needs to win re-election. And then you've got the made for TV federal invasion of Democratic cities intended to stoke racial resentments. And if that wasn't clear enough, Trump is using a racist trope about low-income housing to scare suburban voters,” Reid added with glee as she boasted of bad news.
Without a hint irony, Reid complained to none other than Al Sharpton that Trump had an “inability to restrain himself” while Sharpton himself griped that Trump has “no filter” and has continually played the “race card” (and particularly on housing) “all of his career.”
Yes, the anti-Semite and race-baiting, Tawana Brawley-hoax-peddling Sharpton thinks Trump has a race problem.
He also had this weak attempt at humor: “He's still watching 1950s TV. He probably has a black and white television in his office.”
Reid returned to Sharpton a few minutes later to hail him as “that next generation down” of civil rights icons below Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr., which Sharpton took and ran with to cheer former President George W. Bush as having a “spirit of we can disagree but we don’t have to be ugly” unlike the “venom and ugliness” from Trump (click “expand”):
REID: And you know, Reverend Sharpton, John Lewis was the younger to the Dr. Kings of the world and you were the activist younger to him, you know, being that next generation down, fighting for the same fight that seems to keep happening, Black Lives Matter through the decades. Give us, please, your thoughts on the funeral today and how it struck you, both that and what President Obama said.
SHARPTON: I thought it was one of the most beautiful services that I've seen and the fact that John Lewis deserved it is an understatement, but it also showed — and I think President Obama in his eulogy did it in a very meticulous way, the continuity of struggle that there was a struggle that proceeded John Lewis. He was certainly a hero, a frontline soldier, a general in the struggle, and then he expects us to continue that fight and those behind us. And I think that no one said it better than President Obama, but no one wrote it better than John Lewis. And when I saw George Bush there, I remember when George Bush re-signed the Voting Rights Act. He not only re-signed it, he invited many of us — I was there — that had been marching on him because there was always this spirit of we can disagree but we don't have to be ugly. We've not seen this kind of venom and ugliness in my lifetime until now because George Bush had us all on the rose garden lawn when he re-signed the Voting Rights Act....So to think we're back to arguing about what John Lewis gave blood for shows us how President Obama is right. The struggle continues. You take a step forward, they’re going to try to push you back. We’ve got to be persistent. That was his message and we've got to keep going like John Lewis did.
And for good measure, Reid brought on former Hillary Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri and the supposedly Republican Michael Steele to further the conspiracy that not only could the election be delayed, but the President will use federal law enforcement and the military to stay in office, regardless of November’s results (click “expand”):
REID: And am I — am I crazy to not trust Mitch McConnell at all or these Republicans to resist him? Because they’ve never shown a whole lot of backbone before.
STEELE: Yeah, the track record is not very great there. I don't think the American people are going to go to sleep tonight or even at some point in the future relying on their word that they’re going to stand up against the President....It's going to take a national concerted effort....to make it very clear, vote by mail is not fraudulent. It is something states need to be prepared to do[.]
(....)
PALMIERI: Sure and I believe they are. They are also preparing for what happens after November 3rd when Donald Trump tries to contest the results of the election and I feel the last three-and-a-half years have been all of us training for this moment, right? You know, it has been a really painful time but we've learned. I mean, just look how you and Michael just laid out what happened today. We — we are not going to be because the unaware this time. We know when he's going to distract from tough news. We know what to expect — not to expect too much from Senate Republicans and we know we have to start talking about issues that may seem crazy and out of the ordinary three months in advance, but we know now to expect that Trump will follow through on what he threatens to do. I mean, June was a good test for us, when he used tear gas to gas Americans in order to go across Lafayette Square and have a photo-op, when he tried to rally the National Guard to his side, to — you know — these are — these are moments where we have been tested and we know what to expect. Democrats are working really hard. As you know, it’s not just Democrats, as Michael said, to make people understand how they vote, how they vote safely, why vote by mail is not fraudulent, why your vote will count, and to prepare for the aftermath of it. But I think this is where our training in the last three and a half years has put us in good fighting shape to not let him take our democracy.
Reid’s wackadoo super hero analogy and latest conspiracy theories were made possible by advertisers such as ADT, Advil, and Allegra. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from July 30, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
July 30, 2020
7:00 p.m. EasternJOY REID: Donald Trump is terrified and he has good reason to be. Today the one who triggers him more than any human being Earth, former President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama gave a power eulogy for the late and great, George Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. And in doing so, Obama delivered a treatise on American democracy, a rousing call to arms, that could herald a blue wave this November.
[OBAMA SOUDNBITE]
REID: Trump was so triggered by the reemergence of the popular, globally respected 44th President on the national stage, the Batman to his Joker, that he barely get Obama get to the pulpit at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church before he scrambled to the white house press corps — scrambled the White House Press Corps to announce that he too would have words to say. He abruptly added a previously unscheduled briefing to his schedule, which ended in the last hour. Now, Trump had good reason to fear for his political future even before Obama began speaking. Data out today revealed that the country’s GDP dropped by a staggering 33 percent, marking the biggest economic contraction on record since those records began in 1947. The coronavirus still rages out of control, including in the very states that Trump needs to win re-election. And then you've got the made for TV federal invasion of Democratic cities intended to stoke racial resentments. And if that wasn't clear enough, Trump is using a racist trope about low-income housing to scare suburban voters. That's why, amid all of this, he now says he wants to delay the election. In a stunning tweet, Trump questioned the legitimacy of mail-in ballots proposing to “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and [sic] safely vote.” He refused to back down from that threat at his brief press conference today. Of course, he has no power to actually delay the election. It was an 1845 act of Congress that set voting day in early November, and it's not changing now. On top of that, the Constitution mandates that Trump's term would still end January 20th even if no election were held.
(....)
7:11 p.m. Eastern
REID: And I'm going to let both of you respond to the sort of madness of Donald Trump — he couldn't stop himself, Reverend Al. He couldn't let President Obama get to the pulpit before he had to inject himself into the mix. Your thoughts on that, on his inability to restrain himself?
AL SHARPTON: That's vintage Donald Trump. He has no — not only does he have no filter on what he's going to say, he can't handle situations that he feels he's being upstaged. But if you look at his tweet about the housing situation, it is consistent, because in the ‘70s, his father and he were sued by the federal government for housing discrimination. They had to settle a discrimination lawsuit. He's played that race card of housing all — all of his career and he's only going back to what he's always done. What he doesn't realize is that America no longer exists. Are there people in the suburbs that may have racist tendencies? Sure, but they are everywhere. Joy, we're in the era of gentrification. People from the suburbs
REID: Right.
SHARPTON: — are moving into the city. Who is he talking to? The problem we have in national action network, they are saying we're getting pushed out to the suburbs from the inner city.
REID: That’s right. Yep.
SHARPTON: So he's talking to people that doesn't exist. He's still watching 1950s TV. He probably has a black and white television in his office.
REID: Yeah. He's not up to date. Neal Katyal, I want to go to you on this, because this threat — you know, it's an empty threat in the sense Donald Trump cannot change the day of the election. It's in the Constitution, only Congress can change it, but what do you make of the fact that it's something he's proposing and the fact that he seems to have absolutely no respect for the Voting Rights Act, which is the thing John Lewis gave us with his blood on that bridge.
NEAL KATYAL: It was such a contrast, Joy, between the President tweeting all that, trying to stop people from voting, and what you saw in the celebration of this man today and really in President Obama's remarks. It's hard to eulogize St. John — St. Louis in a way that does him justice, but Barack Obama did and I think — listening — when I listened to it, it was like — it wasn’t just a wistful, like, watch a West Wing episode or something like that. It’s a reminder that our founding values like voting aren’t to be denigrated and that we're all striving to make the nation more perfect.
(....)
7:14 p.m. Eastern
REID: And you know, Reverend Sharpton, John Lewis was the younger to the Dr. Kings of the world and you were the activist younger to him, you know, being that next generation down, fighting for the same fight that seems to keep happening, Black Lives Matter through the decades. Give us, please, your thoughts on the funeral today and how it struck you, both that and what President Obama said.
SHARPTON: I thought it was one of the most beautiful services that I've seen and the fact that John Lewis deserved it is an understatement, but it also showed — and I think President Obama in his eulogy did it in a very meticulous way, the continuity of struggle that there was a struggle that proceeded John Lewis. He was certainly a hero, a frontline soldier, a general in the struggle, and then he expects us to continue that fight and those behind us. And I think that no one said it better than President Obama, but no one wrote it better than John Lewis. And when I saw George Bush there, I remember when George Bush re-signed the Voting Rights Act. He not only re-signed it, he invited many of us — I was there — that had been marching on him because there was always this spirit of we can disagree but we don't have to be ugly. We've not seen this kind of venom and ugliness in my lifetime until now because George Bush had us all on the rose garden lawn when he re-signed the Voting Rights Act. The fact that we're even discussing the fact that the voting rights act was gutted out and I was in the hearing room at the supreme court when they argued those oral arguments and Justice Scalia said voting rights seems a — a — like some kind of racial gift, or something to that nature. We were sitting right there. John Lewis was in the room. I was there with Martin Luther King, III and Jesse Jackson, all of us were sitting there. So to think we're back to arguing about what John Lewis gave blood for shows us how President Obama is right. The struggle continues. You take a step forward, they’re going to try to push you back. We’ve got to be persistent. That was his message and we've got to keep going like John Lewis did.
(....)
7:24 p.m. Eastern
MICHAEL STEELE: The fact that McConnell and others have softly pushed back on that, their test is going to come when he says with a greater degree of ferocity, no, I'm serious. I think we should hold off holding elections this November.
REID: And am I — am I crazy to not trust Mitch McConnell at all or these Republicans to resist him? Because they’ve never shown a whole lot of backbone before.
STEELE: Yeah, the track record is not very great there. I don't think the American people are going to go to sleep tonight or even at some point in the future relying on their word that they’re going to stand up against the President on something like this. It's going to take a national concerted effort with both, you know, conservative and liberal and progressive organizations out there as they have been doing so far to make it very clear, vote by mail is not fraudulent. It is something states need to be prepared to do and that any attempt — any attempt to not hold elections this November is unconstitutional.
REID: You know, and, Jennifer, first of all, let's just show this chart because Michael is right. There was a piece of data out there that Donald Trump owns now that he's presided over the greatest drop in GDP since it's been measured. Look at that drop. You know, that's all him and so, of course, he does want to distract from it, but he also does — he has his authoritarian tendencies. He admires Vladimir Putin. He would like to be here. Somebody who seemed to have seen this coming was Joe Biden, who back on April 23rd, predicted that Trump would try to delay the election. There was an NBC article that quoted him as saying, “mark my words, I think he's going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rational why it can't be held.” Should Democrats be preparing for Donald Trump to attempt to outright delay, stop, steal the election? And if so, how can they prepare?
JENNIFER PALMIERI: Sure and I believe they are. They are also preparing for what happens after November 3rd when Donald Trump tries to contest the results of the election and I feel the last three-and-a-half years have been all of us training for this moment, right? You know, it has been a really painful time but we've learned. I mean, just look how you and Michael just laid out what happened today. We — we are not going to be because the unaware this time. We know when he's going to distract from tough news. We know what to expect — not to expect too much from Senate Republicans and we know we have to start talking about issues that may seem crazy and out of the ordinary three months in advance, but we know now to expect that Trump will follow through on what he threatens to do. I mean, June was a good test for us, when he used tear gas to gas Americans in order to go across Lafayette Square and have a photo-op, when he tried to rally the National Guard to his side, to — you know — these are — these are moments where we have been tested and we know what to expect. Democrats are working really hard. As you know, it’s not just Democrats, as Michael said, to make people understand how they vote, how they vote safely, why vote by mail is not fraudulent, why your vote will count, and to prepare for the aftermath of it. But I think this is where our training in the last three and a half years has put us in good fighting shape to not let him take our democracy.
