MSNBC host Joy Reid spent two successive nights claiming that Hollywood producers go out of their way to promote Trump supporters, putting MAGA Republicans “first in line” for reality TV shows.
Something is “happening on your television screens these days that is more curious. Have you noticed the parade of far-Right figures, MAGA liars, Tea Partiers, coup plotters, and extremists appearing on wholesome, family-friendly, reputation-redeeming reality shows?” Reid asked on Thursday’s show. “The most recent example is coup-inciter Rudy Giuliani, reportedly appearing on Fox’s ‘The Masked Singer.’”
Reality shows, which she claimed enhanced participants’ reputations, should seek to “have the most unifying, broadly beloved people on those kinds of shows, but not now it’s like, if you worked for Trump, you, like, first in line.”
The most recent network performance Reid cited occurred nearly two years ago, when Sarah Palin performed “Baby Got Back” on “The Masked Singer” in March 2020. Reid referenced three previous incidents over 16 years:
- Former Trump White House spokesman Sean Spicer, who is now a Newsmax anchor. was eliminated from “Dancing With The Stars” in November 2019;
- “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which TLC canceled in 2011 despite the show attracting 3.2 million viewers a week; and
- Tucker Carlson’s 2006 appearance on “Dancing With The Stars,” while Carlson hosted “The Situation With Tucker Carlson” on MSNBC.
An MSNBC chryon during the show’s Friday night episode warned these appearances constituted “The MAGA-fication Of Mainstream Media.” Hollywood is almost uniformly liberal in its politics, with Tinsel Town’s Republicans falling well left-of-center on many issues.
Her guest on Thursday, Kurt Bardella — a former senior adviser to The Lincoln Project, whose founder John Weaver eventually admitted sending unwanted sexual texts to numerous men, as young as 14 — told MSNBC viewers that giving TV airtime to someone associated with a crime sets “a very dangerous precedent.”
“Imagine if, after 9/11, some game show gave a position to one of the architects of that terrorist attack,” Bardella said.
“Yeah,” replied Reid.
“To me, what happened on January 6th is on par with that,” Bardella continued. “It’s that severe. It’s that dangerous. In fact, it’s even more dangerous when you look at the erosion of democracy that right now that these forces, led by Trump and Rudy Giuliani, are still trying to perpetrate on our country right now.”
“People are going to laugh at” Giuliani” and “see him as more of an entertainment figure than what he is” a dangerous person who acted like a traitor towards the United States of America.” Bardella said.
The two judges who walked off the show when Giuliani revealed himself—Robin Thicke (who has been accused of groping Emily Ratajkowski in 2013) and Ken Jeong “should be furious at the producers of the show, at the network who allows this to happen, that someone like this is given this type of position,” said Bardella. “You’re going to reward that with a platform, with exposure, with recasting him as a cartoon character, someone that shouldn’t be worried about? He doesn’t deserve that.”
Bardella continued that “there needs to be a bit of a colonoscopy on how the Hell did this happen in the first police? Who made the decision? Who green lit it. Who thought that putting entertainment value above our democracy was a good trade to make?”
“I’m just so sick of seeing these figures from the Trump world, OK?” said Bardella, who has regularly accused Republicans of perpetrating terrorism. “You know, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, the people who wanted to do harm to our nation and to our way of life and democracy — they got nothing on what this Republican Party is doing,” Bardella told Reid last May.
The three figures whom Reid singled out have recently pressed figures in the legacy media for greater accountability.
A U.S. district court in New York held opening hearings in Palin’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times, which accused the conservative Christian of inspiring the mentally disturbed, far-Left occultist who shot then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) in 2011.
Sean Spicer managed to wring a concession out of Stelter, who falsely claimed on the January 16 episode of “Reliable Sources” that when Newsmax carries rallies led by former President Donald Trump, “a small number [of viewers] do tune into these fringe channels, if they can find them somewhere.” Spicer released a transcript of a call he made to Stelter, showing the censorious CNN host that 2.3 million viewers found Newsmax’s coverage of a Trump rally, beating CNN in the Nielsen ratings. On January 30, Stelter admitted that “when Donald Trump is on, Newsmax is high-rated.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter said people can’t find @newsmax – well 2.3 million tuned in to watch the Trump rally (plus another 2.2 million on OTT streaming services) – which is a lot more than watch CNN…so I called Brian and asked him about his claim..WATCH https://t.co/HMEWGcDNh1
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) January 23, 2022
Reid has carried out a years-long vendetta against Carlson, the most widely viewed personality in cable news, who regularly draws more than three-times as many viewers as she does. He, in return, frequently calls Reid “the race lady” when he critiques her show on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.