MSNBC’s post-guilty verdict coverage of the Trump business records trial in New York is proceeding exactly as one might expect it would: with an exuberance that often peeks out from under a veneer of seriousness and gravity. At least for most of their hosts.
Joy Reid, on the other hand, chose tonight to go full Joy Reid. Over the course of a single rant, Reid suggests that two Black Members of Congress sold out for being critical of the verdict, and admitted- nay, CELEBRATED New York’s partisan prosecution of Former President Trump (click “expand” to view transcript):
JEN PSAKI: I mean, the other factor here is what allows him to create the ecosystem and it is the enablers in the ecosystem, right?
ALEX WAGNER: Yeah.
PSAKI: And we'll see and be monitoring and be sharing with people what people are saying. But just- we pulled earlier today, even before this, what some people have been saying in the last couple of days. I mean, Tim Scott, who obviously wants to be the vice president, he posted a full-minute video saying that Alvin Bragg is the only one who is guilty. He called the trial a sham and witch hunt. The only verdict that matters is the one at the ballot box. Okay. But, you know- Rubio compared the trial to Cuban show trials. Um, Noem- Kristi Noem called it a rigged trial. Ted Cruz says this is a kangaroo court. Byron Donalds- this is election interference. These enablers are what enable Trump to create his ecosystem, and they're incentivized to do that because either they want to be the vice president, they want to be in his good order, and because he is the leader of the Republican Party. This is the Republican Party.
JOY REID: I just have- I'm sorry, you said- you triggered me thoroughly.
PSAKI: Oh, I didn't mean to trigger. I'm just reading quotes.
REID: Because Byron Donalds, who is from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, as myself, and Tim Scott, who is from the great state of South Carolina, and Marco Rubio, who is Latino, they know damn well who normally ends up at the bottom of this criminal justice system --
PSAKI: Who are the actual victims of a two-tiered system of justice, which he has co-opted that term.
REID: They know exactly that what they're saying is not just factually incorrect, that in the state where Byron Donalds is a congressman, his governor, Ron DeSantis, has dogwalked black voters for voting. And had made a show of it to make sure they're on television. To humiliate them out of voting, to frighten them out of voting. His state is the one that passed overwhelmingly a constitutional amendment to restore the voting rights of people because they had that post-enslavement Jim Crow law automatically taking the rights of felons to vote from them, which is a Jim Crow relic. That state had it, repealed it, and Governor DeSantis and his Republicans interfered with it to make it harder for people who had served their time to vote. They understand fully because they have lived in the bodies of black men. Those two black men, and they’re willing to sell themselves cheap. Cheap. Not even Clarence Thomas will do that, at least he requires it to be expensive. For them, it can be absolutely dirt cheap. Free. That's the cheapest it could be, to sell your soul. And the lives and memory of all of the black men and women and brown men and women who have suffered in a criminal justice system where they can't delay it, where the Supreme Court won't help them, where they won't have Samuel Alito flying upside down flags for them, where they won't have any of the benefits that Donald Trump has used to kill every case but this one, including humiliating Fani Willis in Georgia, to try to shame her out of prosecuting him. The good thing, the one good thing that happened here is that this case was brought in a state that no Republican controls. Because if it did, the same thing that happened in Georgia would have happened here. Thank God for the state of New York, Donald Trump's home state. Because there was no way for him to interfere with the process of justice. And in this rare instance, as somebody who is quite critical many times of the criminal justice system, the system actually worked the way it is supposed to work. And I agree with you. The one thing that would ruin this very rare moment when we can all say the criminal justice system can actually see past your power and see past your race and your wealth, the only thing that would ruin it is if anyone finds out who these jurors are. Because God help them if that happens. Because then Donald Trump would do what he does.
PSAKI: Because- their safety.
REID: Absolutely. Their safety.
ARI MELBER: Right. You’re talking about whether you have that violence and vigilantism.
Peak Joy Reid. Really. I’ve often said that the left feels entitled to minorities and their opinions. And it is often the self-appointed gatekeepers who lash out the hardest at those who stray from the party line. So here Reid lashes out at Scott and Donalds for daring to speak out against this prosecution, and smearing them as sellouts along with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Reid’s disgusting race essentialism plays on MSNBC screens in season and out of season.
Then you have Reid shouting out the part of the trial that everyone had previously kept quiet- celebrating the fact that no Republicans hold meaningful power in New York. Essentially, an admission that the prosecution of Donald Trump on cobbled-together business records charges was a partisan affair. And, therefore, election interference.
Today will go down in history, all right, just not for the reasons imagined at MSNBC.
