Joy Reid, Fresh Out of a Scandal, Hosts Panel That Bashes Veterans
MSNBC host Joy Reid hosted a panel on her Saturday broadcast during which one of the network’s analysts said military veterans’ “cultish love” of President Donald Trump is “not honorable.”
The comments by MSNBC terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance came during a segment discussing a White House’s aide’s reputed comments about Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain.
Kelly Sadler reportedly said during a private White House staff meeting last week that McCain’s opposition to CIA director nominee Gina Haspel does not matter, because “he’s dying anyway.” The senator is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer and has not returned to Washington, D.C., since leaving for medical treatment in December.
Sadler called McCain’s daughter Meghan to apologize for her comments, but Meghan McCain said Sunday that she’s still waiting for a public apology, according to The Hill.
Reid first noted that California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter “kind of excused” Sadler’s comment. The Marine Corps veteran told HBO’s Bill Maher on Friday that the episode has been “over sensationalized,” but agreed “you shouldn’t make fun of people when they are dying.” He also pointed out that it is common for military members to make “crass” jokes.
“Is there real outrage that this is the way people talk about a war hero like John McCain?” Reid asked her panel.
Nance, who served in the Navy, responded that he did not believe so.
“The difference between what’s going on with Trump’s military base and the rest of the military is very weird,” Nance said. “We have people behaving in sort of flight line, field conditions. That they can make all the insulting jokes that they want, and it’s going to be accepted.”
Nance then dinged Trump for not serving in the Vietnam War, yet “these military people love him, all right?”
“And I’m just going to come right out and say it: not honorable military veterans,” Nance said. “Because an honorable military veteran, if they had heard this story, would have said, ‘You know what, there’s a line, and that line has now been crossed.'”
“But they have this cultish love of him where the love of Donald Trump exceeds the Constitution — exceeds the honor of everyone who has sacrificed and lost in this nation,” Nance added.
Later in the program, panelist Jason Johnson accused Trump of being a white nationalist, based on the president’s desire to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country and prioritize higher skilled labor for legal immigration.
“This is what we have been saying all along about white nationalism, if we’re just going to be candid about it,” Johnson said. “They’re saying certain parts of people from certain parts of the world are somehow incapable of experiencing America the way other people have.”
“Apparently, illiterate people from all parts of Europe created America in the early part of the 20th century, and they can assimilate. But when it comes to brown people from South and Central America, then suddenly it’s a problem,” said Johnson. “And we know what this is about.”
Reid is fresh off weathering a controversy regarding her views on homosexuality, which run contrary to liberal orthodoxy.
Late last month, Reid offered a lengthy apology for a series of anti-LGBT blog posts from a decade ago that have been attributed to her.
The Daily Beast suspended her column after finding Reid’s claims her blog had been hacked “failed to withstand scrutiny.”
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