After former President Trump said on Thursday night that he was being indicted, MSNBC’s Joy Reid feared that he would escape conviction because “Florida…has now become a beachhead for…Nazism.”
Addressing failed New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, Reid bashed the entire state:
Florida is not the Florida that people used to think of as just, like, lots of oranges, beaches, and Disney. Florida is now home to one of the largest concentrations of extremist groups in the country. It has now become a beachhead for racial extremism, Nazism, open Nazism, people marching in the streets, even places like South Florida, places like Orlando.
It must be sad to live your life thinking there’s a Nazi behind every corner, but Reid was just getting started:
The Proud Boys have a huge base in Florida, in Miami-Dade County. They have members or at least affinity people on the Broward School Board. They have essentially taken over the Miami-Dade Republican Party. So, Florida is in many ways a place where the danger to the country, how many Floridians were there on January 6th? A lot. They are a huge source of extremism and pro-Trump extremism specifically.
“Largest concentration” and “huge” are relative terms, a handful of cranks does not constitute a threat to civilization, but just as Wiley was beginning her response, Reid interrupted to add some additional fear-mongering, “It's also a state now where you can carry a firearm without a permit.”
Wiley began by agreeing with that last point, “I mean, look, you're pointing, Joy, to sadly statistics we’ve been seeing rise and we know it increases in election cycles, the violence of hate and extremist groups.”
While she admitted that “many average Floridians do care about the rule of law and do abhor hate and violence,” Wiley also argued it will be up to them to decide:
Do you want democracy and do you want peace, or are you going to go with anyone who, if—if, I'm not saying Donald Trump has or will, in this particular case, but goes to stoking that, exactly what that means for the future of the country, and having been doing work with community-based groups, particularly in Central Florida, I'll say there are a lot of folks who are getting active and engaged because they are concerned about preserving their state's democracy and that does matter.
As for Reid, she was freaking out over a county that Ron DeSantis won 55-44, which is not nearly as red as Washington, D.C. or New York City is blue.
This segment was sponsored by Citi.
Here is a transcript for the June 8 show:
MSNBC The ReidOut
6/8/2023
7:33 PM ET
JOY REID: Well, I mean, it's not going to work, except, Maya, you know, Florida is not the Florida that people used to think of as just, like, lots of oranges, beaches, and Disney. Florida is now home to one of the largest concentrations of extremist groups in the country. It has now become a beachhead for racial extremism, Nazism, open Nazism, people marching in the streets, even places like South Florida, places like Orlando.
It has become a kind of headquarters. The Proud Boys have a huge base in Florida, in Miami-Dade county. They have members or at least affinity people on the Broward School Board. They have essentially taken over the Miami-Dade Republican Party. So, Florida is in many ways a place where the danger to the country, how many Floridians were there on January 6th? A lot. They are a huge source of extremism and pro-Trump extremism specifically.
MAYA WILEY: You know, and sadly –
REID: And also, I will add one more thing. It's also a state now where you can carry a firearm without a permit. Sorry, go, Maya.
WILEY: Yes, no, I mean, look, you're pointing, Joy, to sadly statistics we’ve been seeing rise and we know it increases in election cycles, the violence of hate and extremist groups, but, you know, I think we also have to remember how many average Floridians do care about the rule of law and do abhor hate and violence.
And simply put, it's going to be incumbent upon all of those very rational, sane Floridians to recognize, do you want democracy and do you want peace, or are you going to go with anyone who, if—if, I'm not saying Donald Trump has or will, in this particular case, but goes to stoking that, exactly what that means for the future of the country, and having been doing work with community-based groups, particularly in Central Florida, I'll say there are a lot of folks who are getting active and engaged because they are concerned about preserving their state's democracy and that does matter.
And we have to help keep them safe at the federal level and insure that the federal government is doing everything it can to make sure those resources are getting there to protect the people.
