Ah, Joy Reid: The gift that keeps on giving, even off-camera.
On Monday, the MSNBC anchor was discussing the negotiations between the White House and Congress over Ukraine and border security funding, which Republicans have demanded be tied together. Biden says he agrees, although his “bipartisan” bill comes nowhere close to solving the illegal immigration crisis.
But never mind that, because Reid was claiming that Biden was clamping down on illegal immigration — and would be able to do so more effectively if that “bipartisan” bill was on his desk.
“Congressional Republicans love to latch on to President Biden and Democrats’ successful policies and take credit for things they didn’t do while tying themselves into pretzels to do nothing for the American people for the sake of Donald Trump,” Reid said, according to Breitbart.
“Case in point: Fixing what they say is a crisis at the border with congressional negotiators continuing work on a bipartisan deal to tie border policies to funding for Ukraine.”
At this point, she played a clip of Biden speaking in South Carolina:
“If that bill were the law today, I would shut down the border now. Congress needs to get it done,” Biden said.
Reid apparently didn’t know that she was on a hot mic while she was off-camera. Her, ahem, colorful statement spoken as her crew played the clip of Biden’s promise to shut down the border?
“Starting another f***ing war,” she said.
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
JUST IN: MSNBC host Joy Reid gets caught cursing on hot mic while playing a clip of Biden saying he would close the border if Congress unlocks more money to Ukraine.
“If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” Biden said.
Before the… pic.twitter.com/CqeyPd3AoO
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 30, 2024
Whoopsies!
At the end of the show, Reid expressed remorse for the F-bomb.
“Before we go, I just want to apologize very quickly,” Reid said.
“I was chatting during a clip that was playing, and you know, we try to keep this show very PG-13. I just want to apologize to anyone who was listening to my behind-the-scenes chatter. I’m deeply, deeply sorry for that. As you know, it’s PG-13 around here.”
Now, I have no clue what Joy Reid meant — and a good 74 percent of the time, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t, either. However, she did say what she really believes, which is that this administration — an administration her network spends 24 hours a day cheerleading like they were Taylor Swift and the White House was Travis Kelce — was on the brink of conflict, somehow, somewhere.
If Reid meant digging ourselves deeper in Ukraine would mean a wider war — and I suspect this is not what she meant, considering it already is a war — this is essentially giving lie to the liberal shibboleth that money and armaments to Kyiv must continue uninterrupted and unaudited for an unbounded period of time because Vladimir Putin is a bad guy.
Which, thank you Captain Obvious, but protracted wars with no endgame against very bad people are often not in the best interest of the United States — even if the cause of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people has become practically holy on the left and among right-wing hawks, despite the fact that pouring unchecked resources into a lost cause is both inefficient and risky.
If Reid realizes this despite the fact everyone at her network says the exact opposite, good for her, I guess — but she needs to remember when that mic is hot, for heaven’s sake.
However, it’s more likely that her point was that shutting down the border with Mexico would start a war, given that this is a woman who, last week, compared those demanding border securing to “old Southerners” who happened to be “segregationists.”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid compares @chiproytx‘s call to protect the southern border to “the old Southerners who said that we will resist integration by any means necessary”. To the racial demagogue, everything looks like racism. pic.twitter.com/a876itUHCb
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) January 25, 2024
Thus, the question is: If closing the border is starting a war in Joy Reid’s estimation, it’s a war between whom? The United States and Mexico? Mexico and its Central American neighbors? Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul?
Since when has enforcing border law been a reason for war? What’s the reason for the border, anyway? And if this is what Reid was referring to, why shouldn’t the Republicans be taking credit for forcing the president to do something the Democratic base — represented here by Joy Reid — has an anaphylactic reaction to?
Or, it could be none of the above. Remember, it’s often difficult for people to decipher what the heck Joy Reid is saying at the best of times, up to and including the woman who’s saying it. She’s the very essence of a cable news “personality” — someone without substance who can telegenically string together a lot of meaningless phrases like your kid strings together a macaroni necklace at kindergarten. And the kid is probably putting in more mental effort.
Do you think we’ll be at war soon?
Maybe it’s time that MSNBC admits that Reid is verbally and mentally incontinent. Her inability to maintain a consistent thought aside from “Elephant Party Bad” is an obvious handicap, but not one that has kept her from being employed at the network — so long as the mic doesn’t pick up any of the other garbage that comes out of her brain. This time, it did — whatever that garbage meant.
Whatever the case, MSNBC needs a better host, better technicians, or both. Until then, unless they like unintentional comedy, MSNBC watchers need to find a better news network.