Gerald Bell, Contributor
The day following the 2024 Iowa Caucus–where Donald Trump was victorious with 51 percent of the vote–political and media pundits called out MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid for pointing to white Christians as the reason for Trump’s decisive win.
Reid attributed Trump’s win by highlighting data that shows that white Christians occupy 61% of the state, as opposed to a mere 41% in this country. To support this claim, the MSNBC host cited a conversation she had with Robert “Robbie” Jones, author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy,” who said, “[White evangelicals] see themselves as the rightful inheritors of this country, and Trump has promised to give it back to them.”
Reid then told her co-hosts, “All the things that we think about, about electability, about what are people gaming out, but none of that matters when you believe that God has given you this country, that it is yours, and that everyone who is not a White, conservative Christian is a fraudulent American, is a less real American. Then you don’t care about electability. You care about what God has given you.”
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley fired back at Reid, “Joy Reid lives in a different America than I do.”
Haley, who landed in third place with 19 percent of the vote in Iowa, added, “We’re not a racist country. We’ve never been a racist country—Are we perfect? No, but our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”
Reid faced further criticism for saying Republicans are a “deeply anti-immigrant” party, and that’s why she “can’t picture” Haley–the daughter of immigrant parents from India–being a GOP nominee in 2024.
Anger towards Reid escalated from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights from the organization’s president, Bill Donohue, who wrote to both MSNBC Rashida Jones and Michael Cavanagh of Comcast two days after Reid’s comments, calling for an on-air apology.
He suggests that a double standard exists and expressed frustration that the political commentator did not receive any backlash for directing her comments at Christians as opposed to another group.
“If it were said that Jews have failed both America and Judaism, there would be repercussions,” Donohue writes. “If it were said that atheists believe anyone who is not a believer is a fraudulent American, there would be repercussions.”
Donohue asked, “Why have there been no repercussions regarding the anti-Christian remarks by MSNBC guests and hosts?” His letter vigorously requested that Jones and Cavanagh provide “a response to this serious issue.”
Christian Post’s reporter, Ryan Foley, stated that this was “not the first time Reid had used her platform on MSNBC to bash Christians.” Foley also noted that Reid posted anti-Christian commentary on X(formerly Twitter) saying, “following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and the country’s fall to the Taliban,” as well as her reaction “to news that women were no longer allowed to attend college classes in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan by once again invoking a comparison between the Taliban and American Christians.”
Reid, who worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and is the author of the book “Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide” had not offered a public retraction or apology following the reaction to her comments.