The final night of the Republican National Convention completely sent MSNBC’s Joy Reid over the edge. The host melted down after Donald Trump closed out night four the RNC, fuming that the address was a “repugnant” “crime” possibly heralding the “end of America.”
No invective was too much for Reid as she snarled: “All I have to say is as I'm watching this, I'm thinking Fidel Castro, Julius Caesar, Mobutu Sese Seko That was not an American President giving an acceptance speech.”
(The attack on Trump as Castro is odd, given that MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell praised the Cuban dictator for “dramatically improving health care and literacy.” MSNBC’s Eddie Glaude hailed Castro’s coup as comparable to the American Revolution.)
Somehow the Trump speech signals the coming end of everything. Reid excoriated, “If democracy in America ever falls and we become a complete autocracy with a decrepit leader and his corrupt family moving their trunks into the White House and never leaving, if we become -- if we become the old DRC, you know? Or we become what Brazil is now, if we just fall as a democracy, tonight is what it will look like.”
Only getting more worked up, she continued:
This is what it will look like to have a decrepit, corrupt monarch. This was a crime. Every cabinet member that was sitting there was violating the Hatch Act. Ivanka Trump was violating the hatch act. This was repugnant to see a campaign sign festooned on our property, on the White House, with a big iron gate outside so that the people can't even come in. This was repugnant. This would be the end of America. If this is what we're going to be, this won't be a democracy. That's a monarchy. It was repugnant. Sorry.
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A transcript is below. Click "expand" to read more.
MSNBC Republican National Convention coverage
8/27/2020
11:40 PM ETJOY REID: All I have to say is as I'm watching this, I'm thinking Fidel Castro, Julius Caesar, Mobutu Sese Seko That was not an American President giving an acceptance speech. That was a monarch. It was — it was very much like what Castro used to do. An hour and ten minutes that clocked in. It wasn't a usual Trump speech with his ad libs. He did the sort of humor thrown into it. He was — he said, “The fact is I'm here, and they're not.” He made the White House into the Trump palace.
If democracy in America ever falls and we become a complete autocracy with a decrepit leader and his corrupt family moving their trunks into the White House and never leaving, if we become -- if we become the old DRC, you know? Or we become what Brazil is now, if we just fall as a democracy, tonight is what it will look like.
This is what it will look like to have a decrepit, corrupt monarch. This was a crime. Every cabinet member that was sitting there was violating the Hatch Act. Ivanka Trump was violating the hatch act. This was repugnant to see a campaign sign festooned on our property, on the White House, with a big iron gate outside so that the people can't even come in. This was repugnant. This would be the end of America. If this is what we're going to be, this won't be a democracy. That's a monarchy. It was repugnant. Sorry.
