On Wednesday night's freakout called The Reidout on MSNBC, host Joy Reid was comparing pro-life Republicans in North Carolina who voted to outlaw abortion after 12 weeks to the Islamic terrorists and tyrants of the Taliban. Her guest was Mini Timmaraju, leader of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Reid showed video of the state House speaker trying to restore order as pro-abortion protesters screamed.
NO fear of fact-checkers when you compare pro-life Americans to the Taliban, a "religious group of extremists." NO fear of fact-checkers when you claim the people trying to save unborn babies "definitely don't care about children."
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 18, 2023
People who love Joy Reid love misinformation. pic.twitter.com/Wq7o5krcbW
REID: And that scene of women weeping and chanting "Shame" while a man bangs the gavel and basically tells them, if you can't be quiet and let us strip you of your rights, you can get out, it felt very Taliban to me.
And I bring up the Taliban a lot with my poor beleaguered team. [!] But the thing about Republicans now is that they are acting in a very Talibanesque way. They are a religious group of extremists who they definitely don't care about children. They want to control women.
They want total control over women. And they are exercising that control -- let's put up the map -- all across the former slave states and in states in the West that they control, while women have no power to stop them, or a few like Tricia Cotham join them. And then these women wake up in a country -- in a state where they have no rights. What to do?
Timmaraju claimed abortion is extremely popular: "We know that more and more Republicans are actually with us on abortion rights, right? We just did some research with Change Research; 73 percent of Republicans, three out of five independents, 51 percent of Donald Trump's supporters don't want politicians interfering in these decisions. Actually, a majority of rural white men in this research were with us. So it's wild to watch these Republicans commit this extreme overreach."
Aborting a baby in the third trimester is never an "extreme overreach" for these leftists. She told Joy she appreciated her "coverage." And Joy went back to the Taliban mud bucket again:
REID: What we now have is the merger of right-wing extreme Christian right politicians and the judiciary. So they're not -- their rulings are predictable based on their politics, not based on the law. I mean, this is why I compare it to the Taliban. When they took over in the 1990s, people were like, yes, they will be great because they're anti-corruption. And then they found out what they really are. They want total religious control over that population. Republicans are behaving the same way.
Timmaraju said it goes hand in hand with attacks on democracy
TIMMARAJU: We know the majority of Americans are with us on these issues, on these issues, gun violence prevention.
REID: It's supermajority support.
TIMMARAJU: A supermajority. So what can they do, right? They have to cheat. They have to gerrymander. They have to erode access to the ballot box. So we have been saying for a long time, and you have been saying it, that access to abortion is -- was the eye-opening experience for most Americans about the crisis in our democracy.
This toxic talk of the Taliban was brought to you in part by CarFax.
