MSNBC host Joy Reid has become the latest TV presenter to suggest that Donald Trump is partly to blame for the assassination attempt against her.
Reid was on air with fellow MSNBC star Rachel Maddow covering the Republican National Convention when she suggested the former president was suffering “consequences” for “promoting” violence.
“The idea of political violence that we’ve been feeding is really very dangerous,” Reid said. “It’s so dangerous that you can’t avoid its consequences, even if you’re one of the people promoting it.”
Reid stressed that she did not want to see Trump “rewrite himself as a victim” and used reports of voter intimidation in Arizona as an example of the political violence she says Republicans have been fueling.
“I think about the people who tried to vote in Arizona when men with long guns were outside the polling places to send them a message,” he explained.
MSNBC host Joy Reid has become the latest TV host to suggest that Donald Trump is partly to blame for the assassination attempt on her.
“If you don’t vote the right way, I’m here with this gun.”
Reid also claimed it was similar to when “menacing” gunmen at the 2016 Republican National Convention “walked” near his booth to “send a message.”
Many questioned Reid’s comment and expressed outrage on social media, with one X user calling her “the vilest woman in America.”
User Brandon Tatum said: ‘Manipulation at its finest. That’s how crazy these people are.
‘Joy Reid says Trump shouldn’t be allowed to play the victim after BEING SHOT.’
MSNBC has been at pains to prevent its liberal stars from making embarrassing comments following Saturday’s shooting at Trump’s rally.
The network did not air Morning Joe, its flagship morning political show, on Monday, instead broadcasting breaking news about the assassination attempt.
There were concerns that one of the show’s panel discussion guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to attack the network and the show, CNN reported.
An MSNBC spokesperson denied the CNN report.
MSNBC has been at pains to prevent its liberal stars from making embarrassing comments following Saturday’s shooting at Trump’s rally.
Scarborough and his co-host and wife Mika Brzezinski returned to the air Tuesday morning and expressed frustration with network executives who they say blindsided them.
The network is known for featuring guests who lean toward progressive and Democratic politics, and executives reportedly wanted to avoid making any guest appear insensitive toward the former president.
On Tuesday, Scarborough said he was “very disappointed” that his flagship morning show, Morning Joe, was taken off the air.
Thomas Matthew Crooks
Scarborough and his co-host and wife Mika Brzezinski returned to the air Tuesday morning and expressed frustration toward network executives who they say blindsided them.
He then said that the next time that happens, they will be in the chairs covering breaking news, or else the network can hire “someone else.”
The Secret Service is investigating how the 20-year-old gunman with an AR-style rifle was able to climb onto a nearby roof and shoot and wound the former president at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania.
The gunman, who authorities say was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired several shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside the rally site,” the agency said. Trump was bloodied and says he was “shot with a bullet that went through the top of his right ear.”
One spectator was killed and two men were seriously injured.
An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photographs taken at Trump’s rally, as well as satellite images of the scene, shows the shooter was able to get surprisingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking.
The roof was less than 150 metres from where Trump was speaking. Biden ordered an independent review of security at the rally.