Media top headlines July 21
In media news today, politicians mislead on Texas education bill, Jeff Bezos gets roasted for thanking employees and customers for paying for his spaceflight, and critics slam the press for soft treatment of Democratic 'Texas super spreaders'
MSNBC awarded controversial pundit Joy Reid her own weekday show one year ago this week when "The ReidOut" was born despite the host’s controversial past – and the far-left host hasn’t toned down her behavior while serving as the liberal network’s primetime lead-in.
Reid was chosen by MSNBC brass to fill the 7 p.m. ET timeslot left by Chris Matthews’ sudden retirement after he was accused of making inappropriate remarks to a female guest.
MSNBC awarded controversial pundit Joy Reid with her own weekday show one year ago this week. (MSNBC)
JOY REID SLAMMED IN 'MIC DROP' MOMENT AFTER TWITTER FEUD OVER ROB SCHNEIDER
Her show has seen its viewership drop every month of 2021, and July is shaping up to be its lowest-rated month ever. Reid, who survived a 2018 scandal where she bizarrely claimed homophobic comments from her old blog were placed by hackers, hasn't stopped spreading misinformation, making outlandish claims, or pushing conspiracy theories since hosting "The ReidOut."
Here are 10 times the MSNBC host found herself in the news over the past year:
Reid was blasted for referring to Justice Thomas as 'Uncle Clarence'
Reid caught fire for using a racial slur against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during MSNBC’s 2020 election coverage, calling him "Uncle Clarence," a reference to the "Uncle Tom" term for Blacks viewed as servile to Whites.
Following then-President Donald Trump's remarks from the White House, where he vowed to take any outstanding ballot counts to the Supreme Court, Reid sounded the alarm that the conservative-controlled bench would favor the president.
"It's not exactly clear that we can trust Amy Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh and these others not to be just like Bill Barr," Reid said, referring to the attorney general. "So what I think scares people is that if [Trump] decides to do something that legally makes no sense ... but if they somehow manage to stumble into the Supreme Court, do any of you guys trust Uncle Clarence and Amy Coney Barrett and those guys to actually follow the letter of the law? No! I mean, it's a completely politicized Supreme Court that you can't just trust that they're going to do the right thing."
This wasn’t the first time the "ReidOut" host attempted to delegitimize Black conservatives. During the Republican National Convention, Reid suggested that the GOP "trotted out" Black people to speak in order to make White nationalism more acceptable.
MSNBC PERSONALITIES SHARE 2019 PHOTO OF CROWDED MIAMI BEACH IN FAILED CORONAVIRUS SHAMING ATTEMPT
Reid mocked GOP as 'Grand Q Party,' questioned if situation at southern border is really a 'crisis'
Reid had quite a show on March 23, dismissing the notion the surge of migrants that has overwhelmed border facilities is a "crisis" while allowing a guest to claim Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, "has pushed back against his Latino identity."
She also referred to the GOP as the "Grand Q Party" and declared Republicans don’t care about unaccompanied children along the southern border. The "ReidOut" host played a montage of various Republicans calling the situation a "crisis" before questioning if that was the correct term.
"Yes, migration at the southern border is a genuine political challenge, an ongoing one that spans several previous administrations," Reid said. "But is it a crisis as Republicans so desperately want the media to portray it as?"
Reid botched meaning of data website FiveThirtyEight
In a single, error-laden tweet, Reid informed followers that the data website FiveThirtyEight was named for George W. Bush's 2000 election margin of victory over Al Gore in Florida and that the "Republican SCOTUS reversed the 2000 election."
That was all incorrect, and it was especially embarrassing for a former Florida resident who covers politics to so badly mess up the details of the state's infamous recount.
FiveThirtyEight is named after the 538 electoral votes up for grabs in a presidential election, while Bush's official victory total over Gore in Florida was 537 votes out of more than six million cast, leading to a recount. The Supreme Court also did not reverse the 2000 election result; the Bush v. Gore decision reversed a lower court's order to recount thousands of votes in the state. Later analyses showed Bush would have won the state even if the recount had gone forward.
Reid said Tim Scott was only present at GOP press conference for 'diversity'
Reid claimed Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., was only at a press conference opposing a minimum wage increase to create a "patina of diversity," in what essentially amounted to her tokenizing the Black Republican.
Reid played a clip of Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., explaining Republican opposition to a $15 minimum wage as part of the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus passed in the House. With Scott standing behind him, Thune said such a measure would hurt efforts to get Americans who lost jobs in the pandemic back to work.
"You've got to love Tim Scott standing there to provide the patina of diversity over that round of words, that basket full of words," Reid told Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
Scott's press secretary Caroline Anderegg flagged the exchange and blasted Reid, saying Scott was "not a prop."
Reid insinuated Republican senator is secret Kremlin plant
Reid referred to Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., as a conspiracy senator "by way of Moscow," insinuating that he was a Kremlin plant.
The remark drew derision from liberal journalist and corporate media critic Glenn Greenwald, who said it was "bats--t crazy and as much conspiratorial derangement as anything from QAnon." This followed Reid saying that President Donald Trump was "servile" to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
JOY REID’S MSNBC SHOW HAS WORST WEEK EVER, SETS VIEWERSHIP LOWS IN MULTIPLE CATEGORIES
Reid thought 2019 beach photo was taken during coronavirus pandemic
Reid shared a crowded Miami Beach photo in March 2021 to complain about vacationers flouting coronavirus distancing guidelines, but there was one problem: the photo was from 2019.
"Today's center of the #COVIDIOTS universe is Miami Beach, Florida," MSNBC analyst Fernand R. Amandi tweeted, complete with a photo of a packed beach.
Internet sleuths quickly pointed out the photo was taken for a 2019 Sun Sentinel article about Miami Beach law enforcement cracking down on rowdy spring breakers, nearly a year before the pandemic shut down the United States.
Reid claimed conservatives would trade tax cuts to 'openly say the n-word'
The MSNBC host tweeted earlier this year that conservatives would all love to "openly say the n-word" and felt oppressed because they couldn't be "openly racist."
"I'll say it again: people on the right would trade all the tax cuts for the ability to openly say the n-word like in 'the good old days.' To them, not being able to be openly racist and discriminatory without consequence is oppression. Trump is the avatar for this 'freedom,'" Reid tweeted.
Her inflammatory tweet came the same day she said states like Texas and Mississippi that are opening up and reversing mask mandates are doing so because White residents want Black people to "get their behinds into the factory and make me my steaks."
SEN. MIKE LEE CALLS OUT JOY REID'S ‘LAZY ATTACK’ ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY OPPONENTS
Reid flamed for behavior during interview with CRT critic
Reid faced intense scrutiny over her June interview with Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, where she repeatedly interrupted the guest in what was supposed to be a debate on critical race theory.
Reid had accepted a challenge to debate Rufo following a dustup on Twitter, but the segment quickly devolved when she barely allowed him to finish a sentence throughout his appearance, condescendingly calling him "dear" and a "quasi" historian.
The far-left host was lambasted on social media following the segment, including by Rufo himself, who expressed his desire to have a "real debate" the next time he appeared on her show. MSNBC framed the interview on YouTube as Reid having bested him in the segment, leading to more ridicule.
MSNBC’S JOY REID CONTINUES TO MAKE CONTROVERSIAL COMMENTS THREE YEARS AFTER HOMOPHOBIC BLOG SCANDAL
Reid doubted crime spikes are real because she hasn't heard 'anecdotes from friends' in cities
The "ReidOut" host expressed doubt about the growing crime rate across the U.S. because she hasn't heard "anecdotes from friends" who live in the cities being affected.
"I've seen more TV stories about crime than the actual anecdotes from friends in NYC or other big cities bear out," Reid tweeted. "I mean summer is when crime always goes up and Shark Week happens perennially, despite the rarity of actual shark attacks. But it's ... odd for sure."
Reid compared anti-CRT parents to segregationists, using children as 'fodder'
Earlier this month, Reid compared parents who oppose schools teaching critical race theory curriculum to their kids as segregationists. She tweeted out several photos in an effort to compare current activists against critical race theory to race segregationists from the 1950s and 60s.
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"A reminder that the earlier versions of these ‘anti-fake CRT parents’ also used their children as fodder and false cries of "communism" to enforce their ultra-conservative, white-supremacist vision of America. #uncancelhistory," Reid tweeted to caption black-and-white photos of crowds objecting to integrating schools.
That very same week the "ReidOut" namesake also suggested that the grassroots movement to stop critical race theory from entering schools was "being exploited" by QAnon and other conspiracy theorists.
Reid remains best-known for a 2018 scandal in which she claimed that homophobic comments on her old blog, "The Reid Report," were not written by her. In a story that stunned the media industry, Reid blamed hackers and claimed to enlist the FBI to investigate her implausible claim. However, her story fell apart as she admitted she had no evidence her past words were manipulated.
The MSNBC host eventually admitted it was unlikely she was hacked but claimed that she didn’t recall making the offensive remarks, for which she apologized anyway. MSNBC stood by her throughout the embarrassing saga and also made her one of the faces of its political coverage, alongside fellow left-wing anchors Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick and Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report