MSNBC’s Joy Reid will become the network’s first black prime time anchor. An unabashed progressive, Reid is a fierce critic of President Donald Trump. She’s also been accused of lying through her teeth.
Reid’s promotion to prime-time status seems like a tactical one for MSNBC, given the national nervous breakdown over race in recent weeks. Her show, ‘The ReidOut’, will offer standard Washington political punditry, but will also address race, class and policing, as well as other “cataclysmic social issues we need to reckon with,” she told the New York Times on Wednesday.
“I am a Black mom, a Black woman, a Black daughter,” Reid told the Times, adding: “I am also a journalist who can conceptualize that pain from a unique point of view.” Race, it seems, will be front and center in Reid’s new 7pm show.
Before she was elevated to prime-time status, Reid hosted a weekend talk show – ‘AM Joy’ – on the network since 2016. Despite never missing an opportunity to slug it out with the Trump administration, Reid was left egg-faced in 2018 when a slew of her old blog posts came to light, in which she offended homosexuals, Republicans, homosexual Republicans, Muslims, and the Israel lobby.
Reid attempted to ‘out’ Florida Congressman Charlie Crist as gay, calling him “Miss Charlie,” along with a host of supposedly closeted politicians. She praised Hamas terrorists, accused Israel of holding “the whip hand” over both parties in Congress, and said she was “probably” homophobic.
Reid first claimed that “hackers” fabricated the posts to defame her, even hiring cybersecurity experts to back up her claim. When no evidence of meddling emerged, she apologized, but said she didn’t remember writing those “hateful things.” Asked about the posts by the Times on Wednesday, she said she doesn’t “spend a whole lot of time thinking about that old blog.”
Sad to see the @nytimes — in its article about Joy Reid's MSNBC promotion — include multiple paragraphs about how she got caught fabricating an intricate tale of hackers & an FBI investigation, as if serially lying is relevant to the job of MSNBC host.https://t.co/98b99pWd4npic.twitter.com/umFngyslLR
Reid’s blogging activities would likely be a cancelable offense, were the rest of her political views not lock-step with the liberal establishment. While her views on LGBT issues, at least according to her blog, are out of step with her network, her views on ‘Russiagate’ are more than a match for those of her colleagues, even perpetual Russia scaremonger Rachel Maddow.
In 2016, Reid still thought that Russia was a “communist” dictatorship. In 2018 she believed the Obama-era intelligence agency yarn that President Trump was “only installed through the wiles of Russia.” This year, she was still insisting that Trump turned the US into “Russia’s sidekick.”
Such opinions are par for the course at MSNBC. The aforementioned Maddow regularly lies to her audience about all things Russian. Top host Joe Scarborough thinks Russian hitmen killed billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Lawrence O’Donnell, meanwhile, could give Maddow a run for her money, and has had to correct numerous fact-free Russian “bombshell” stories in recent years.
Still, Reid’s fellow liberal pundits cheered her promotion. Perhaps, left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald mused, “serially lying is relevant to the job of MSNBC host.”
Sending all my love, pride, and thrilled congratulations to the brilliant @JoyAnnReid as she begins this historic next phase. You’ve earned it sis and we are with you. ❤️
— Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) July 9, 2020
