Pot, meet kettle. Before we get down to Reid’s unintentionally hilarious claim (which fits one of the two major U.S. political parties to a tee, though not the one she names), we need to do a little minor housekeeping with her comments leading up to that assertion.
In the video that follows, Reid is a guest of Chris Hayes, who starts the ball rolling with this insult:
What we’re seeing in some ways is a culmination of a very long project, a very long set of trends about conservatism in particular and whether they believe what they call the mainstream media or the liberal media. And, at a certain point, it’s like, it gets to the point that even black and white in an email that says, “Do you want to collude with the Russian government in this election?” …, doesn’t penetrate or change people’s minds.
Reid came back with this affirmation:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Yeah, like almost cartoonishly bad, as if the Russians said, “Let’s see if we can write an email that’s so cartoonishly, villainously, blatantly obvious that nobody’s going to go for this,” and they even put in the “crown prosecutor.” It’s ridiculous — they don’t even have a czar anymore. And they bought it — they’re like “Really? Well, we can do anything.”
Granted, this is MSNBC, which should temper your expectations, but even a political analyst for that network should have a better grasp on the facts. “The Russians” didn’t send Donald Trump, Jr., the email requesting a meeting between him and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The man who did was Rob Goldstone, a public relations specialist born in the UK and who now resides in the U.S. His chief connection to Russia is that he represents Azerbaijani pop star Emin, who is popular in Russia.
It’s a minor point, but in the world of journalism neatness counts.
On to the “money” (read “delusional”) part of Reid’s disquisition:
I mean, look, the reality is, Donald Trump didn’t invent this Republican party — he just saw the trends and took advantage of it. This is a Republican party that’s been built on resentment and a sense of victimhood, a sense of persecution — almost a persecution complex — for more than 40 years — almost 50 years going back to the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement when they felt persecuted by the world.
One planet is Joy Reid living on?! With an almost daily stream of stories about triggers, microaggressions, dog whistles, and trumped-up claims of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and more, how can any serious commentator make the allegation Reid made?
It truly boggles the mind.
(h/t Brad Wilmouth, NewsBusters)
