A day after her meltdown calling President Trump’s White House return a “Mussolini moment,” MSNBC’s ReidOut host Joy Reid not only reupped the nonsense for Tuesday’s show, but went further in the A-block by speculating Trump must be sicker than has been made public and even insinuating he might die of coronavirus like the late Herman Cain did on July 30th.
And for good measure, she brought on panelists to affirm these claims and stand up for the White House press corps, ungirding this absurd notion that they risk their lives to stand up for the American people.
“Donald Trump, the reality television President, went to extravagant lengths this week to spin his failure to contain the coronavirus,” began Reid, sporting her usual glee and hatred.
Reid noted the growing White House coronavirus outbreak before pontificating that Trump’s entire life was largely fake and inauthentic as his Saturday and Monday “photo ops and visuals” were “orchestrated” along with health reports.
She didn’t cite any evidence for that claim, but she made it anyways: “While that is being packaged and produced to create a version of Trump who is capable and healthy and strong, that is fooling no one because everyone outside of his sycophants on Earth two, assumes that Trump is sicker than he's letting on.”
After ghoulishly claiming all Republicans don’t care about any of the coronavirus cases or deaths, Reid continued to spout off.
Before bringing in her panel, she even touted reporting from the conspiratorial and sleazy Gabe Sherman and complained about Trump receiving medical care that Americans (like his staff) don’t have (click “expand”):
What Trump hoped to hide during his American Mussolini balcony stunt was that he was clearly having trouble breathing, just like he wants to hide that he is not in control of the virus or an election that he is desperate to win. Trump is falling even further blind Biden in battleground states that he needs to win the presidency back and Trump isn’t just desperate. He's clearly afraid and not just of not just the virus hurting him, as Vanity Fair’s Gabe Sherman reported this weekend. No, he is afraid of you. He's afraid of voters.
(....)
But rather than acknowledge the seriousness and the severity of the infection, which would be the only hope for him to turn the campaign and his presidency around, he is embracing his identity as a confirmed super spreader putting people and their families at risk, from the Secret Service agents who were forced to drive in a hermetically-sealed SUV for his photo op to his Democratic opponent who Trump says plans to face in person in a town hall debate in nine days, to White House staff who were forced to work for a President who says they say shouldn't be afraid of coronavirus despite not having the healthcare privilege that only the sitting President enjoys.
A few minutes later, Reid insisted White House staffers “should be” scared to death of the coronavirus (as should all Americans, ostensibly leaving them mentally crippled). But worse than that, she proceeded to not only play amateur doctor in remarking to far-left MSNBC medical analyst Dr. Lipi Roy, but hint at her wonderment Trump could die within the next month (click “expand”):
Lipi, I reached out yesterday. I emailed you yesterday, just about watching Donald Trump do his Mussolini moment. People started noticing he appeared to be laboring in his breathing that, at one point, he put his hand on his diaphragm. Like he was wincing in pain. He was trying to look like a tough guy, but he looked, quite frankly, like a very sick elderly man with a lot of makeup on. That's what he looked like to my eye. And so I want to direct you, just for a moment, to a Tim O’Brien tweet. Now, Tim O’Brien is obviously not a doctor, but he just put down a — a timeline that I’d love you to comment on. It says here, Herman Cain — he’s talking about Herman Cain, a Trump ally to the end of his life. He got sick on 6/24. He attended a Trump rally with no mask. We don’t know if that’s where he got it. We should note that. He tested positive on the second of July. By the 30th of July, he was dead. And in between the 2nd and 30th, he kept saying he was feeling better. I’m sure, at some point, maybe his doctor — I don't know — the doctor sent him home, thought he was fine. But he ended up dying.
Trump tweeted out and said people should not be afraid. Made a video. People should not be afraid of the coronavirus. That tweet was considered so egregious that even Facebook and Twitter took down his statement because it is false and they even reacted and Facebook is usually pretty liberal about letting him say whatever he wants. How much danger is Donald Trump in, a few days — we don’t know how many days into his coronavirus prognosis. And how much danger are his staff in?
Without having conducted any in-person examinations of Trump, Roy replied that he’s clearly using “accessory muscles” in his stomach because he had to have had “shortness of breath.” And like Reid, she bemoaned Trump’s “privilege” of having top-notch doctors.
“So, the next coming days, Joy, he's far — far from being out of the woods. So, he got dexamethasone, a steroid which is going to make anyone feel better in the short term. In the long term, in a few days, I should say, who knows what will happen. He needs to be closely monitored and yeah, of course he's actively infectious,” she added.
Question for Joy and Lipi: Would Barack Obama deserve health care most Americans couldn’t think of having if the pandemic struck during his presidency and he had to be hospitalized?
Fast-forward to the back end of the segment and Reid fretted to PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor: “I wonder if — if you — the media, at some point, if the White House Correspondents Association is going to say we don't want anyone near this guy. We don’t want anyone going back.”
Geez, it seems like someone agrees with what CBS’s Ben Tracy had to say.
Alcindor complained that she and her colleagues are in “a tough position” between “putting our own families at risk by going to report at the White House” and fulfilling her “mission...as White House correspondent...to represent the American people, to press for so many answers because this is an administration that needs to be held accountable.”
Reid’s amateur medical diagnosing and speculation about the President dying like Herman Cain was made possible with the help and support of advertisers such as ClearChoice, Qunol, and WeatherTech. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant transcript from October 6, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
October 6, 2020
7:00 p.m. EasternJOY REID: Donald Trump, the reality television President, went to extravagant lengths this week to spin his failure to contain the coronavirus. A failure so thorough, he couldn't even protect his wife, his staff, his press secretary, members of the United States Senate, the military members, and Secret Service agents sworn to protect him or even himself from catching it. And so, at least 18 people connected to the Trump White House are now infected. Late today, we learned that Stephen Miller, senior adviser to the President, has also tested positive. But what Donald Trump wants you to take from that is the spin that, well, he faced the coronavirus head on and he beat it. So now, you should revere him and stop fearing the coronavirus. What Trump does not want you to know is that reality TV, especially the one about his presidency, is fake, just like The Apprentice was fake. He really wasn't that rich or even sort of successful. All that ridiculous Trump rhetoric, scripted. Both photo ops and visuals orchestrated. At great risk, by the way, to staffers and to photographers and to other innocent people. Donald Trump is highly contagious with an active infection of COVID-19 that he has been infected for we don't know how many days. While that is being packaged and produced to create a version of Trump who is capable and healthy and strong, that is fooling no one because everyone outside of his sycophants on Earth two, assumes that Trump is sicker than he's letting on. And coronavirus isn't just coursing through the 7.5 million Americans most of whose name you don't know and it has killed more than 211,000 Americans, all of whom Trump and his party have ignored since March. It's also surging through Congress and through the White House with a fourth press staffer in addition to Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany testing positive today as well as a Trump military valet, who came into contact with Trump testing positive over the weekend. And now, senior military officials including chairman of the chiefs chief of staff are in quarantine after exposure to COVID-19 and to the infected President. What Trump hoped to hide during his American Mussolini balcony stunt was that he was clearly having trouble breathing, just like he wants to hide that he is not in control of the virus or an election that he is desperate to win. Trump is falling even further blind Biden in battleground states that he needs to win the presidency back and Trump isn’t just desperate. He's clearly afraid and not just of not just the virus hurting him, as Vanity Fair’s Gabe Sherman reported this weekend. No, he is afraid of you. He's afraid of voters.
(....)
7:06 p.m. Eastern
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: So, what you see here really is a White House that is — that has a virus that is coursing through it and a President who is continuing to now falsely say that it's like the flu when we know that the coronavirus has killed five times the amount of people than the flu has in the last five years. It’s killed more than that, so it's really remarkable that the President is continuing to talk about this and trying to project strength when there are so many people in the White House are frankly scared, Joy.
REID: And they should be. Donald Trump has a highly lethal infection disease and he's walking around and pulling his mask off, which we saw him do last night. As for the contact tracing that Yamiche just mentioned, the White House has said no to the CDC, which is the preeminent agency that could do it. They will not be assisting them, allowing to assist with contact tracing. We should note that. Lipi, I reached out yesterday. I emailed you yesterday, just about watching Donald Trump do his Mussolini moment. People started noticing he appeared to be laboring in his breathing that, at one point, he put his hand on his diaphragm. Like he was wincing in pain. He was trying to look like a tough guy, but he looked, quite frankly, like a very sick elderly man with a lot of makeup on. That's what he looked like to my eye. And so I want to direct you, just for a moment, to a Tim O’Brien tweet. Now, Tim O’Brien is obviously not a doctor, but he just put down a — a timeline that I’d love you to comment on. It says here, Herman Cain — he’s talking about Herman Cain, a Trump ally to the end of his life. He got sick on 6/24. He attended a Trump rally with no mask. We don’t know if that’s where he got it. We should note that. He tested positive on the second of July. By the 30th of July, he was dead. And in between the 2nd and 30th, he kept saying he was feeling better. I’m sure, at some point, maybe his doctor — I don't know — the doctor sent him home, thought he was fine. But he ended up dying. Trump tweeted out and said people should not be afraid. Made a video. People should not be afraid of the coronavirus. That tweet was considered so egregious that even Facebook and Twitter took down his statement because it is false and they even reacted and Facebook is usually pretty liberal about letting him say whatever he wants. How much danger is Donald Trump in, a few days — we don’t know how many days into his coronavirus prognosis. And how much danger are his staff in?
LIPI ROY: Yeah, so when he was standing — great to see you, by the way, Joy — when he was standing on top of wherever that was, you know, I looked at that video many, many times. And I think when people think of shortness of breath they think of huffing and puffing, right? You don't see that. But what you can see is he's using what we call the accessory muscles, right? It’s labored breathing. He's using these muscles to breathe. For people like you and I who are not having trouble breathing or do not have dyspnea, shortness of breath, we don't need to use those muscles. But he’s clearly using those and there’s a point that you made, Joy, yesterday on your show, which I didn’t even realize, he had somebody else probably apply that make up, so somebody else had to get close enough to him. You know, to — to your point, you know, the President said something to the fact of — you know, something to the affect of look at me. I'm better. So, just to point, he received — he had access to some of the most world class state of the art experimental medication, hospitals, a specialist, doctors, his personal transportation, security, all of this is to encompass — encapsulate one word. That is privilege. That is something the nearly 7.5 million infected patients — people in this country right now do not have. It’s something that the 210,000 people and counting who have died, including Mr. Herman Cain, did not have. It's not something — it's a lack of access that most people in this country don't have access to just good, old-fashioned healthcare. And we already know, Joy, that over 80 percent of the people who died have been elderly. We know that black, brown, Native American, Hispanic people are disproportionately infected. What’s the President going to do in terms of reassuring them? What I would have wanted to hear as a doctor and a public health advocate, who believes in science and data, is wear this. This is what’s going to save your life and keep physical distancing. Those two things will save your life, Joy.
REID: And — and — how much danger does Donald — is Donald Trump? Since he is actively infected and contagious, how much of a physical threat does he pose to the people in the White House?
ROY: Yeah, let me answer that. Let me answer something else I didn't get to. So, the next coming days, Joy, he's far — far from being out of the woods. So, he got dexamethasone, a steroid which is going to make anyone feel better in the short term. In the long term, in a few days, I should say, who knows what will happen. He needs to be closely monitored and yeah, of course he's actively infectious. He’s in the most infectious period right now. He should be in isolation, which means none of the photo op non-sense gigs in isolation, far away from people, masked, and good hand hygiene. That’s what needs to happen, Joy.
(....)
7:14 p.m. Eastern
REID: Yeah. And, Yamiche, you know, the press corps obviously has been put at risk. You’ve been out there as well. Kayleigh McEnany has refused to put a mask on. She also plays the role. You know, I — I wonder if — if you — the media, at some point, if the White House Correspondents Association is going to say we don't want anyone near this guy. We don’t want anyone going back.
ALCINDOR: I think it's a tough position to be in because if you become a journalist and I’m sure, Joy, you understand this, you have this mission and as White House correspondent, you have this mission to represent the American people, to press for so many answers because this is an administration that needs to be held accountable and they need to be held accountable at times in person cause that's when you can get them on camera, on the record to answer tough questions, including why aren't you doing more to help Americans as the Federal Reserve chairman says that if you don't help and if Congress doesn't do something, then we’re going to get even further into this and there’s not going to be an economic recovery to speak of. But I think there are a lot of reporters, myself included, who are constantly balancing putting our own families at risk by going to report at the White House. So, I think, myself and my colleagues — I know, for me, when I go there I make sure that I’m — I’m masked, that I’m socially distancing, that now, I’m really staying outside. But there are a lot of people are clearly being put at risk from this and there are a lot of people who are very angry, frankly.
