Former MSNBC host Joy Reid is rethinking her loyalty to the Democratic Party, she revealed Tuesday.
Reid appeared on The Breakfast Club, where she explained why she’s “barely hanging on” even though “I’ve been a Democrat since I was old enough to vote.” She explained, “I’m not willing to cede the country to Trumpism and MAGA simply because I’m clinging to this party…the party is not bigger than the future of my kids. You know what I mean? I have three children. I have a daughter and two sons that have to live in this country as Black people—and fascism don’t work for me.”
The new podcast host, whose MSNBC primetime show The Reidout was axed without explanation in February during a bloodbath of the network’s non-white hosts following Trump’s election win, believes the Party’s old guard is helping Trump’s agenda, she explained.
“What the Democrats do wrong is that they prioritize whose turn it is,” she said. “Democrats are very orderly. They’re almost too orderly for fascism.”
As an example, she pointed to the lack of party support for younger leaders like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett.
“Democrats say, ‘AOC we like her, we support her. We think she’s great, but we have this other person that needs to be the chairman of this committee because they’ve waited in the wings and now it is their turn.’ The person who was picked over AOC has now passed away‚” Reid said, referring to Ocasio Cortez’s loss for the top spot on the House Oversight Committee Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, who passed away at 75 last month. “That’s what Democrats do.”
Reid said she’s become so fed up with the way the party works that she’s now asking herself, “Who cares what the party label is?”
She’s not the first prominent voice in the party to voice her dissatisfaction. Joe Biden’s former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced she left the party to become an Independent earlier this month.
“People getting all mad at Karine Jean-Pierre for saying she’s” done with the party, Reid said Tuesday, “I’m not mad at that because at this point, who cares what the party label is? Give me an effective fighter. If Jasmine Crockett is the most effective fighter, give me Jasmine Crockett. And I really don’t care what you have to move around or who you have to disappoint in order to give me her. Just give me her because we need a leader.”
Only new leadership and new “ideology” would help at this point, Reid added. “You know, in fascism, you can’t be orderly because the other side is messy. And Donald Trump stays messy.”
Trump’s “messiness” works to his advantage with the typical American voter, Reid said, because, “Everything he does is random. But it also exudes power. It just says ‘I have so much power that I don’t care about the rules.’ I think for ordinary people who are not political, who don’t pay attention, to them that just says that he gets things done.” She understands that appeal, she said, since the Democratic response is so slow.
Trump “doesn’t say, you know, ‘I don’t have 60 votes. I can’t do that.’ That’s what Democrats say. He doesn’t say, I’d do it but it has to get out of committee in the House.’ That’s what Democrats say.” Trump’s “marketing” skills are convincing people that he’s “effective,” she said, offering an analogy between the president and Sean “Diddy” Combs, formerly known as “Puffy.”
Trump is “the Puffy of politics,” she explained. “Both in the sense that he might be a diddler, but also in the sense that he has no actual talent. I used to be like, ‘That dude thinks he’s a rapper, but he’s not.’ What he is, is he’s a good A&R. That’s what Trump is” for politics, Reid said. And she’s not convinced the Democratic Party, as it stands now, can compete with that without making major changes.
“You have to blow up the whole Democratic Party,” she declared. “I feel like the Democrats need a whole new ideology, because they lost to that. So what does it say about them? You got to just blow it all up. There’s nothing to be said from anybody in that old regime.”
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