Joy Reid, the eponymous host of MSNBC’s The ReidOut, and The Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens teamed up on Monday night to accuse Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of waging “the most openly fascist campaign” they can remember and to declare that this is what the Republican Party desires.
Transitioning from talking about Donald Trump to DeSantis, Reid proclaimed, “And Stewart, I'm going to give you the last word on this because Chris Christie got booed for telling the truth about Trump. So, and he’s at 5 percent, he's, you know, he’s somewhere, he’s not nowhere. He’s ahead of Nikki Haley and some of the others. But what does it say about the Republican Party that the next guy down is Ron DeSantis, who is running the most openly fascist campaign I think I've ever seen.”
Reid tried to give her incendiary charge some credibility by adding, “And I'm saying that, having covered Donald Trump running for president. That's the next guy down.”
That is not a compelling statement when the left has been calling Republicans fascists for decades. Reid also never why what DeSantis is proposing that is so allegedly fascistic. Being pro-life, keeping school libraries age appropriate, removing partisan left-wing curriculum from the classroom, insisting that men are men and women are women, is not even remotely close to fascism.
Stevens, however, agreed with Reid, “You know, this just goes to my point that this is what the party wants to be. And it's a hard thing for a lot of us who worked in the party to accept, that we helped create this monster. But we did. And this is very purposeful by the party. But it's not something they stumbled into.”
Like Reid, Stevens never explained what he meant when he said people like him “helped create this monster,” but he did continue to tell MSNBC’s progressive audience what they wanted to hear, “Their second choice is a guy who is worse than Trump. So it's a threat to what it means really to be an American. And I think we have to realize that and address it accordingly.”
Realize what, exactly?
This segment was sponsored by Liberty Mutual.
Here is a transcript for the June 26 show:
MSNBC The ReidOut
6/26/2023
7:40 PM ET
JOY REID: And Stewart, I'm going to give you the last word on this because Chris Christie got booed for telling the truth about Trump. So, and he’s at 5 percent, he's, you know, he’s somewhere, he’s not nowhere. He’s ahead of Nikki Haley and some of the others. But what does it say about the Republican Party that the next guy down is Ron DeSantis, who is running the most openly fascist campaign I think I've ever seen. And I'm saying that, having covered Donald Trump running for president. That's the next guy down.
STUART STEVENS: Yeah, I mean, I suppose if you're inside the DeSantis war room, you got to think of a way to get yourself indicted to get up ahead of Donald Trump. You know, this just goes to my point that this is what the party wants to be. And it's a hard thing for a lot of us who worked in the party to accept, that we helped create this monster. But we did. And this is very purposeful by the party. But it's not something they stumbled into. Their second choice is a guy who is worse than Trump. So it's a threat to what it means really to be an American. And I think we have to realize that and address it accordingly.
