For an encore of her incendiary rant about the entire right loving Covid, MSNBC’s ReidOut host Joy Reid initially seemed to have backed down on Thursday following Wednesday’s viral comments, but that went by the wayside as she falsely claimed conservative icon Ben Shapiro was an anti-vaxxer and white supremacist, insisted it was necessary and “rational” to be an anti-vaxxer under Donald Trump, and continued to accuse Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) of murder.
First, the lies about Shapiro. Reid started the D-block with yet another response to Nicki Minaj’s tweet that, without evidence, claimed the Covid vaccine made men impotent and offered sober facts about the safety of vaccines. But again, she couldn’t help herself from going over the edge.
After acknowledging that Minaj has said she will get vaccinated to go on tour, Reid lamented that “[t]he worst part” of her feud with Minaj was that certain people “enjoy[ed]” it and specifically “white nationalist curious, Victor Orban enthusiast, and no friend of hip-hop or non-white people, period, Tuckums Carlson.”
Reid noted Minaj had tweeted a Carlson segment in support of her from the internet onslaught, but she quickly griped that Minaj “gave in to the right's favorite talking point that, somehow, celebrities are not allowed to agree with Republicans.” Of course, Reid went onto to prove that exact point.
Reid furthered careened off the edge when she argued Minaj shouldn’t “want to be associated with a white nationalist” like Carlson and like-minded “right-wing bomb throwers” like “the Ben Shapiros” of the world because they don’t want Minaj and other Black people “to have free speech.”
She continued to spew lies, adding that such individuals “want...to drag as many of her fans into their anti-vax camp as they can” because “[t]hey need and crave authentic members of [Black] culture, hip-hop culture” even though “they look down on” and “hate” it.
Throwing in disdain for the fact that people would object to the song WAP and a Lil Nas X music video, Reid ended that rant by reiterating how “[t]he right has no use for people in the culture until they're useful for the purposes of hurting people in the culture.”
Of course, none of that was true. An Orthodox Jew who’s spent years facing attacks from white nationalists, Shapiro has been perhaps conservative media’s most vocal support of vaccines to the point that even The Atlantic has said he’s backed them “all along.” Samples of this can be found here, here, here, and here, Joy.
After a video tweet about the segment, Shapiro responded and then colleagues rushed to his defense (see here, here, here, and here).
In the next block, fellow charlatan Michael Eric Dyson was along for the ride as Reid continued to defend her past comments as an anti-vaxxer, arguing that “anybody rational” should have been “hesitant” when the coronavirus vaccines were developed and launched under President Trump:
Listen, I was hesitant. When Donald Trump was out there controlling the CDC and controlling the FDA and manipulating them and making them put out falsehoods, anybody rational was hesitant.
Without pushback, Reid ended the show by telling viewers that not only would 70 million-plus right-of-center Americans not “give a damn if Nikki Minaj gets Covid and dies,” they all “don’t care about” Black people because “they’re pushing us to fight each other instead of fight Covid.”
Earlier in the show, Reid took seven minutes (instead of less than one) to talk about the right being murderers, including DeSantis (click “expand”):
[TO DR. JUSTIN GILL] We are seeing a lot of whining from people who don't want to get vaccinated and feel that they’re being trampled on, being discriminated against. They’ve tried to liken themselves to black people in the 1950s who couldn't eat in a restaurant. That's how far this is going and trying to sort of drag the civil rights past into their struggle, which is: what is their struggle again? They feel they have a right to spread a deadly disease. Like they might as well have the measles blankets in the 1600s and say, “I have a right to throw it on you.” And they’re saying that, “if you don't want me to do that — if don’t let me do that, then somehow I'm the victim.” I wonder if, in sort of the hospital culture, are you seeing a shift in people who then get Covid — are people having a come to Jesus moment in these hospitals or are they still going all the way to their deaths believing that their only — that the real victimization here is that they were being told to get vaccinated?
(....)
It's a sad point where we have to now sort of appeal to the Ayn Randian selfishness of people to get them to do something that is not only simple but free. You know, and I think sort of the king of that right now at this point is Ron DeSantis, who's built an entire political brand around refusing to stop Covid from killing, you know, Vietnam, you know, War-era levels of people in his state. He’s built his brand saying — he just won a federal case, an appeal, in which dis — parents of disabled kids were suing, saying your mask mandate ban could put our kids at risk of dying. And he said so what. We're not going to let them have mask mandates in these schools. Your kids have to subject themselves to Covid. Screw you essentially.
Reid’s continued hateful rhetoric and lies about conservatives like Shapiro were made possible thanks to the endorsement of advertisers such as Fidelity, Humira, Prevagen, and TD-Ameritrade. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from September 16, click here.
