MSNBC’s Joy Reid finds herself once again on the hot seat amid growing talk of a potential Kyle Rittenhouse lawsuit against the serial race-baiting cable news host.
The Rittenhouse trial was the ultimate litmus test of whether Reid could rescue her show from careening off the rails into low-ratings oblivion. She failed in flying colors.
There are too many ignorant and racially inflammatory statements uttered by Joy Reid in her fact-free reportage on the Rittenhouse trial to recount here. One particularly repugnant example is Reid pointing at the exonerated young man as the reason that Critical Race Theory exists (or doesn’t exist, depending on the day).
“You want to know why Critical Race Theory exists, the actual law school theory that emphasizes that supposedly colorblind laws in America often still have racially discriminatory outcomes?” she asks. “Then look no further than the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.”
“Earlier today, the teenager accused of murdering two men and wounding a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year took to the stand in his own defense,” she said. “The circumstances are almost built for an actual CRT course. The white now 18-year-old faces an almost entirely white jury of his peers, with the exception of one black man, and then there’s Judge Bruce Schroeder, who has barred the prosecution from calling the people Rittenhouse killed victims.”
That’s before Joy Reid mocked Rittenhouse for crying on the stand and compared him to Brett Kavanaugh, who was also savagely slandered by the radical left.
“His [Kavanaugh’s] tears turned out to be more powerful than the tears of Christine Blasey Ford,” Reid said on TikTok. “But in America, there’s a thing about both white vigilantism and white tears, particularly male white tears. Really white tears in general, because, that’s what Karens are, right? They can Karen out and then as soon as they get caught, bring waterworks.”
Kyle Rittenhouse was being treated, understandably, for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after he shot and killed two white career criminals named Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, whose father Reid even hosted while glossing over the latter’s criminal history.
Thank you John Huber for trusting me with Anthony’s story, and your family’s. Deepest condolences from the entire @thereidout team. https://t.co/h9bg33gXwj via @msnbc
— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) November 23, 2021
Reid recklessly spun the Rittenhouse case as a racially significant trial that was a throwback to the Jim Crow era, when the facts of the case showed it was more about a young man who felt obligated to defend his family’s community from destructive rioters.
“It’s stunning, Katie, this feels like those cases in the 1950s where it was in and out, in and out, you know, somebody white male killed someone and they were in and out, fast and acquitted,” Reid said. “That’s how it feels to me.”
Radical BLM agitators had descended upon the Kenosha community after the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Federal prosecutors did not bring charges against the police officer after Blake was seen on video brandishing a knife. The facts did not stop Reid from inflaming racial tensions in that case, either.
While Joy Reid might get away with expressing her “feels” about matters of public importance, she cannot get away with knowingly lying to her audience to maliciously defame someone she disagrees with. Kyle Rittenhouse did not “cross state lines” (he has immediate family members who live near Kenosha), he did not illegally possess a firearm (the judge threw out this charge upon examination), and he clearly shot his attackers in self-defense.
The relative odds of prevailing in a defamation lawsuit or in procuring a hefty settlement thus go up substantially if a media figure can be shown to have knowingly espoused falsehoods to further a narrative that villainized Rittenhouse.
Media critic Joe Concha appeared on The Story with Martha McCallum and advocated for a lawsuit against Joy Reid. Concha weighed in after MacCallum aired a ‘supercut’ of Reid’s inflammatory remarks (including the ‘CRT’ clip referenced above).
“That was exhibit A, B, C, D, and E right there,” Concha said. “The next chapter in the Kyle Rittenhouse story are likely multiple defamation lawsuits against not only several media outlets but also MSNBC in particular and a host named Joy Reid, who we had the pleasure of hearing.”
“As for Mrs. Reid and multiple contributors calling Rittenhouse a racist, a white supremacist and, most importantly, guilty until proven innocent… I have got four words for you: ‘Covington Catholic Nicholas Sandmann’ – who sued CNN for what, $275 million, and forced them to settle,” he added.
The specter of a defamation lawsuit is adding to reports that MSNBC executives are coming under increasing pressure to fire Joy Reid. Former Mediaite editor Jon Nicosia reported the word he got from an insider source:
SOURCE: There is serious talk all the way up the chain at Comcast about Joy Reid's future at MSNBC.
— Jon Nicosia (@NewsPolitics) November 23, 2021
The report fueled reaction that spanned from those who would approve of the job termination to those who will believe it when it happens:
https://twitter.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1463160531636961296
Has Joy Reid been fired yet? Asking for everyone.
— LJ 🇺🇸 Wants to Save America (@beyouonlybetter) November 23, 2021
https://twitter.com/SusanStJames3_/status/1463143821315817473
If @JoyAnnReid was white she’d have been fired and cancelled long ago.
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) November 23, 2021
Joy Reid ain’t gettin fired..
Even though her ratings are trash, Her brand of racist, vile, white hate, is too prevalent on that garbage network to get her fired…
She’s the brand standard.. https://t.co/7S1X2g2tn3— Will. Power – Dragon🔥🔥 Truth Bringer (@KIR_bigg50) November 23, 2021
https://twitter.com/McKaylaRoseJ/status/1463161013755424775
The incredulity springs from having seen Joy Reid in hot water on numerous occasions prior. After past ‘homophobic’ posts on her blog were unearthed, Joy Reid initially claimed that they were the result of a ‘hack.’ Then she had to make a weird ‘confession.’
“I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things, because they are completely alien to me,” she said on AM Joy. “I hired cyber-security experts to see if somebody had manipulated my words or my former blog. And the reality is they have not been able to prove it.”
Bizarre and dishonest. Then there is the awkward fact that C-SPAN’s political editor Steve Scully was placed on indefinite leave after making a similar ‘hacking’ claim when he was exposed getting presidential debate coaching from Never-Trumper Anthony Scaramucci.
But there is a more powerful reason why the chatter about Reid’s imminent cable news demise might have more legs this time around. The race-baiting shtick isn’t working. And her show’s ratings are now in the sewer, along with her incendiary rhetoric.
“The ReidOut is having its worst quarter ever, even as its far-left host has generated headlines for attacking conservatives, flip-flopping on the COVID vaccine, and using the chaotic troop withdrawal from Afghanistan to take a shot at the United States, while defending President Joe Biden at every turn,” Fox News media reporter Brian Flood noted.
“Joy Reid is the perfect encapsulation of how partisanship can harden into pure hatred in one’s heart for each and every human being who doesn’t think and vote the same way. It’s almost demonic in the way she speaks about the tens of millions of Americans who lean right and engages in both a cartoonist and dangerous level of incitement,” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told Fox News Digital.
Joy Reid’s inflammatory race-baiting may be MSNBC’s “brand” right now. But her demonstrable lies may wind up costing the network tens of millions of dollars, and that’s where the network’s inexplicable loyalty to the host may come to an end.
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OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author's opinion.