On Thursday night, MSNBC’s The ReidOut host Joy Reid returned from a few weeks off and immediately reasserted herself as the most poisonous person in news. In just under 15 minutes, Reid blamed conservatives for all sexual predators, demanded the right go silent about Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) because of Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Donald Trump, and defended Cuomo as having done “a much better job on the pandemic than Trump.”
And despite a claim to support women, Reid implied Bill Clinton accuser Juanita Broaddrick was too far right to have been telling the truth about a man who “cheated with an adult, and he got impeached for it.”
Of course, she had help from New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay (yes, the one who’s scared of the American flag) and thrice-married Never Trumper/progressive Charlie Sykes.
Reid began by sharing her vacation travels with a number of liberal journalists and Black Lives Matter activists, but quickly pivoted to the Cuomo scandal by saying that the right “need[s]...to need you to stand down” on this because “you never used even an ounce of that energy for any of your folks.”
Reid spent the next few minutes demeaning Thomas’s character (as the press have done for decades), falsely claiming that Thomas as “credibly accused” by Antia Hill and multiple other women.
She also griped about Kavanaugh, mocking him as “the, 'I like beer and I black out justice'” who “cried and whined his way through his confirmation hearings, in which he was credibly accused” of sexual assault.
Once again, this wasn’t true either. Interesting how Reid never mentioned the even-more-dubious tall tales from Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick.
Of course, she also fixated on former President Trump and the “at least 26 accusers” as a way of dismissing the claims against “nasty Cuomo.”
Most notable here was Reid’s implicit claim that Trump was a fellow participant with Jeffrey Epstein in his underage sex trafficking escapades (of which there’s zero evidence).
Reiterating that “holy, holy MAGA Trumpers” should “fart off” on Cuomo and “let the adults in the room” fix things, Reid briefly fawned over the governor as someone who did “a much better job on the pandemic than Trump” and even dismissed the deadly nursing home scandal as merely one of “many issues.”
After listing off three male House Republicans who’ve been accused of misbehavior (despite their vehement denials), Reid blamed the right for having “created” the “dynamic” of sexual misconduct and then defended Bill Clinton has having merely “cheated with an adult” and “got impeached...by men who were stooping their secretaries.” She then invoked Broddrick but brushed her aside as too deranged to have been truthful. Her evidence? A Gettr post about January 6.
She closed the rant by once again blaming the right for planet Earth being “replete with predatory men” and causing women to be assaulted by the likes of Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein (click “expand”):
Yeah, okay, this country — no, this world is replete with predatory men. They’re in politics and T.V., hey, Matt Lauer, and Hollywood and hip-hop. There’s Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves and Bill O’Reilly and the probably burning in hell Roger Ailes and Russell Simmons and on and on and on. It’s a huge problem. But it’s one that has grown out of this toxic idea of male entitlement that only one of our two political parties actually embraces. Democrats literally fired Al Franken for a picture and apparent hugging. We are over the top on moral compass on this side. It is you on the right who voted 60 percent in Alabama for Judge Roy banned from hot topic Moore and voted six in ten for Jeffrey Epstein’s rapey bosom buddy Donald Trump. And then made him your king. So that’s on you.
Joining me now is Mara Gay, a member of the New York Times Editorial Board, and Charlie Sykes, Editor-at-large at the Bulwark and an MSNBC contributor and columnist. Thank you both for being here. I want to start with you, Mara, because I sat and kind of wrote this rant just thinking as I was flying back from Cabo and just listening to a reading, what was on Twitter about Cuomo, and — and I think everyone is outraged at the stories you’re hearing. But I’m thinking to myself the people who were doing the most talking are the people who have been the most silent about all of those other people and those other cases.
Hard to get any more poisonous and devoid of humanity in cable news than that.
Gay made sure to compliment Reid’s vile bile, lamenting there’s an “infuriating” and “obvious” “double standard” with the right vs. Cuomo seeing as how Cuomo belongs to the one political party that’s “the only one holding it down for democracy.”
She also had her moment of sympathy for Cuomo as she griped that the right has been “ready to cut down somebody who is one of the most or was one of the most popular figures and in the Democratic Party.”
Masquerading as a principled conservative, the thrice-married progressive gushed that “Democrats are willing to hold their own accountable” in “a real contrast” from the GOP because the latter has “no shame whatsoever.” He even added that Cuomo has lacked “a liberal media echo chamber that’s going to be defending him” (click “expand”):
I agree with what Mara had to say here. I mean, the extraordinary story to me is the way that the Democrats are willing to hold their own accountable. I mean this is a real contrast. I think that Andrew Cuomo’s looking around and going, “okay, you know, one thing I learned is like Bill Clinton, do not resign. Like Donald Trump, do not resign, do not admit anything.” And yet, the rules have changed for him. But he doesn’t have a party that is going to line up behind him, like Donald Trump had. He doesn’t have a conservative — I mean, sorry, a liberal media echo chamber that’s going to be defending him. I mean, he’s out there on his own.
(....)
I certainly understand the contrast — I mean, look, Republicans who are piling on Andrew Cuomo having supported Donald Trump have — have — obviously have no shame whatsoever. But I do — but I do think that you do — you do look at these two different parties, the parties, the way they do it. I mean, I wish Republicans, you know, after the Access Hollywood video would have come out, would have basically said we’re done with this guy. And some of them did for about five freaking minutes. And yet look what they did. And so now they have no moral standing to talk about this. But I agree with Mara, leave aside the whataboutism, Andrew Cuomo needs to be held accountable, he needs to go, he needs to be impeached, needs to resign and I think that will be a good thing for our politics.
Reid closed with another clownish statement as she falsely claimed Democrats don’t idolize their politicians because they know “there’s a difference between respecting a politician and worshiping them.”
Reid’s divisive, poisonous rant that treated conservatives and Republicans like enemies of the people was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as Amazon, Ancestry, Ensure, and Liberty Mutual. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from August 5, click here.
