Jockeying with MSNBC colleagues to be the Biden administration’s Baghdad Bob on Afghanistan, ReidOut host Joy Reid spent Thursday’s show bolstering her resume by chastising the media for having a “gaze...fixed on Afghanistan” and being “pissed off” that the deadly and chaotic withdraw hadn’t “go[ne] smoothly” instead of spending more time focusing on the January 6 riot or Thursday’s bomb threat.
Reid bolstered her mental gymnastics by arguing the press have remained unhappy about what’s happened despite the “remarkable” sight of “daily press conferences and demands for oversight and constant information.” And if that wasn’t enough, Reid vocalized what she tweeted on Sunday, that the American right was on equal footing with the Taliban.
After leading off with more dangerous rhetoric on Covid, Reid turned to the bomb threat outside the Library of Congress by griping that the press and American populace have taken a “dramatically different” and more intense interest in Afghanistan than January 6 and domestic terror threats.
Reid unspooled her off-the-wall logic about Afghanistan vs. January 6:
For the past three days, the American media gaze has been fixed on Afghanistan...We've heard 24/7 dissections of everything the Biden administration did or didn't do and all the factors going into the withdrawal of U.S. troops and what it all means for Biden's political future and the future of Afghanistan and of our country. It's been remarkable to see daily press conferences and demands for oversight and constant information flowing out of Washington and the press. It sure is dramatically different, frankly, from how the country has approached the January 6th insurrection[.]
MSNBC charlatan Malcolm Nance was happy to oblige, saying that “it’s absolutely amazing” that Americans were dithering about an “incompetence or — or lack of planning” in Afghanistan when “we had the same thing at the Capitol.”
Reid went next to MSNBC legal analyst and former Obama U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance with more of her grievances that there haven’t been daily or twice-daily January 6 briefings like the Defense and State Departments have done with Afghanistan. Of course, Vance agreed.
Returning to Nance, Reid’s rhetoric went in a poisonous direction as she said the GOP was just like the Taliban because they coddle extremists like the Taliban “back[s]...al-Qaeda” as “an extreme, right-wing organization” (click “expand”):
And, you know, the only reason that we know who the Taliban are is because they decided to back a terrorist group, al-Qaeda, right? They're an extreme, right-wing organization that perverts, you know, the Islamic faith for power — for their own — to take power — for power. Here in the United States, our extremists have a political party backing them. They have the only other major political party backing them. There are only two major political parties. One of them basically backs them, right? Let me show you this poll real quick, Malcolm. Whether our people are concerned about extreme — domestic terrorism and foreign terrorism: Are you concerned about terrorism, terrorist groups in the United States? Republicans, even Republicans, 57 percent are concerned about it. Democrats, 75 percent are concerned about it. But concern about foreign terrorism. Well, Republicans are far more — they're a little less concerned about that, but, you know, you can see that there is somewhat of a — of a — of a partisan difference, but people are actually really concerned. Even Republicans are concerned about domestic terrorism in the United States. Can you get me to understand why we have one political party that has opted out of securing this nation from a lethal threat that the FBI, not some liberal organization, but Chris Wray worked for Trump, right — he was Trump's FBI director, too — says is a lethal threat to us.
In the next block, Reid expanded on her colossal strawman about the right as opposed to Afghans coming to the U.S., calling it a “bewildering” and “growing Republican backlash” to “welcoming them with open arms for putting their lives in danger to help keep us safe at home.”
That conveniently left out at least eight Republican governors, a primetime Fox News host, multiple Fox News contributors, a Trump White House communications director, and the co-founder of The Federalist to name a few.
At the end of that segment with progressives Christina Greer and Never Trumper Tim Miller, Reid again lashed out at the press for calling out Biden’s memory issues and word salad on Afghanistan, implying journalists were insufficiently concerned about those still trapped:
And you know what? I am far more interested in how we get that mission done that you just described than in knowing what Joe Biden knew from the CIA on Saturday. Like, I actually feel like the media has been more obsessed with, “how did Biden not know the Taliban were terrible?” He knew they were terrible. Okay? We get it. We get it, media. You're pissed off about that it didn't go smoothly like you were when they rolled out ObamaCare. We get it. But I want to know, to what you want to know: how do we get them out of there?
Whatever you do with your life, don’t be so blindly partisan that you end up like Joy Reid. Cause what an embarrassing life that would be.
Reid’s defense of the Biden administration and comparing the American right (which consists of at least 75 million people) to the Taliban was made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as Ensure, Farmers Insurance, Fidelity, 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 July 19, click here.
