News and Commentary

MSNBC’s Reid: Racist Cops Go Soft On Capitol Rioters Because They’re White

Rioters "own the cops." Police: "We’re with you. You’re good. We’re not gonna hurt you. Because you’re not them.”

   DailyWire.com
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 13: Joy Reid attends the National Town Hall on the second day of the 48th Annual Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on September 13, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Earl Gibson III/Getty Images

On Wednesday, in the midst of the chaos and turmoil as rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol, (with one woman apparently having died from being shot), MSNBC’s Joy Reid stated that the police did not act aggressively toward the rioters because the rioters were white.

Reid said of the rioters, “Even when they’re engaged in attempting to occupy our Capitol to steal the votes of people who look like me because, in their minds, they own this country, they own that Capitol. They own the cops. … And so when you think you own it, you own the place, you ain’t afraid of the police because the police are you. And the police reflect back to them: ‘We’re with you. You’re good. We’re not gonna hurt you. [Because] you’re not them.’”

Reid prefaced her remarks about the riots at the Capitol by referencing the 2015 riots in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray:

It looked like a war zone. Police brought in tanks; they brought in body armor; they were wearing full-body armor rubber suits where they almost looked robotic. Full gear, enormous powerful weaponry. And they were phalanxed out all across Baltimore, Penn and North. They were standing menacingly, waiting to brutalize anyone who even looked at them funny. The level of force, the level of just almost indiscriminate rudeness, cruelty, hardness of those police officers, and at curfew time, which would be 9:00, and then almost every night during that uprising, at some point I would go on with you, Rachel, and describe to you what I was seeing, and it was terrifying. And what terrified me in those moments in Baltimore were not the marchers, I was never afraid among the marchers; the marchers just wanted justice. They just didn’t think it was okay to just kill a guy because he looked at the police funny.

“I wasn’t afraid of them; I was afraid of the cops because they were menacing,” she continued. “They knew those marchers were coming every night; they knew there was going to be a curfew every night; the great Elijah Cummings would walk people home and get them to go home because he didn’t want them out after curfew. There would always be some guys who would stay out after the curfew who would refuse to go home, who would claim the right to be in their streets, and I was never afraid of them. I was afraid of the cops.”

She turned to the Capitol riots on Wednesday: “The reason, as Claire talked about, that these people were so unafraid of the cops, who were sparsely distributed through our Capitol, which hasn’t been breached since 1812, when it was burned, the reason they could easily and casually, with their cameras on, film themselves throwing things through the walls of our Capitol, our property, going inside the Capitol, sitting in Speaker Pelosi’s office, casually take pictures of themselves, have that played on Fox News, they know that they are not in jeopardy. Because the cops are taking selfies with them, walking them down the steps to make sure they’re not hurt …”

“White Americans are never afraid of the cops, even when they’re committing insurrection,” she surmised. “Even when they’re engaged in attempting to occupy our Capitol to steal the votes of people who look like me because, in their minds, they own this country, they own that Capitol. They own the cops. … And so when you think you own it, you own the place, you ain’t afraid of the police because the police are you. And the police reflect back to them: ‘We’re with you. You’re good. We’re not gonna hurt you. [Because] you’re not them.’ Guarantee you if that was a Black Lives Matter protest in D.C. there would already be people shackled, arrested, or dead. Shackled, arrested, en masse, or dead. Get Brittany Packnett Cunningham on here. She’ll tell you how they treated her in Ferguson. Put Alicia Garza on here; she’ll tell you how they treated her at every Black Lives Matter march. Get Patrisse Cullors on. They’ll tell you; they’ll tell you what it feels like to ‘protest’ peacefully and unarmed, and how the police will treat you if you’re black. That’s it. They’re not afraid of the cops [because] they know the cops are cool with it.”

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace agreed: “Stunning vacuum of information we have. And without any other explanations, it’s certainly the most logical one …”

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