On Tuesday night, MSNBC host Joy Reid complained that “the Republican Party has pounced on” video footage of left-wing activists harassing Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) inside a restroom. Reid essentially justified the protesters’ decision to record a U.S. senator in the lavatory, blithely saying that while their behavior was “not ideal,” this case constitutes “desperate times, desperate measures.”
“One of the biggest debates ripping through Twitter right now is about a bathroom or, rather, whether it was appropriate for activists to follow Senator Sinema into a bathroom, demanding action on DACA and the reconciliation bill,” said Reid during the final segment of “The ReidOut.”
Reid said the self-described illegal immigrant accosted the senator in a bathroom stall because Sinema does not hold enough public meetings. “Now, I think we can all agree it’s not ideal for any party involved to follow anyone into a bathroom for any reason — but keep in mind, the Arizona senator has canceled her in-person meetings and hasn’t hosted a town hall in three years, so desperate times, desperate measures,” ranted Reid.
In this edition of "The Absolute Worst," @JoyAnnReid critiques the members of the Republican Party who have proliferated harassment and violence, now apparently calling for decency. #TheReidOut #reiders pic.twitter.com/teH2BGXlwt
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) October 6, 2021
Reid then accused Republicans in general, and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in particular, of acting hypocritically in condemning left-wing activists who physically confront U.S. senators in intimate settings while Republicans send mean tweets.
“Of course, the Republican Party has pounced on the incident to reignite the decency debate, clutching all the pearls as they complain, ‘What if those activists had been MAGA?’” said Reid.
“First off, the Republican Party saying the Left is uncivil? Ha!” she laughed. “OK, I just had to get that out of my system.”
“You, the Republican Party, proliferators of harassment and violence, you don’t get to talk about decency,” she said, citing the Capitol riot of January 6. “Conservatives manufactured outrage over masks and history lessons, [and] took our school boards hostage like a bunch of screaming maniacs,” she added. “You betcha [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene] would have followed David Hogg into a bathroom.”
Reid pivoted the show by contrasting left-wing activists’ repeated acts of harassment with Republican Twitter jokes.
“Just last night, your very own Senator Ted Cruz essentially tweeted ‘F you, Biden,’ using a ‘Wheel of Fortune’ meme,” she said.
I’d like to solve the puzzle….#LetsGoBrandon pic.twitter.com/Epl3TFEnob
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 4, 2021
“No wonder Neera Tanden called him a vampire in her tweets,” she said, calling the senator “Cancun Cruz” and addressing him by his birth name. “Rafael, no one is looking to you for political decency,” Reid said before naming the Texas Republican Tuesday’s “absolute worst.”
Reid’s statements signal a growing public backlash against left-wing activists pushing the senator to give amnesty to illegal immigrants through the reconciliation process, something the Senate parliamentarian has rejected twice. In a statement after the event, Senator Sinema said, “It is the duty of elected leaders to avoid … creating a permission structure for unacceptable behavior.”
Reid also contrasts with many other cable news talk show hosts in excusing the restroom activism.
“When you violate someone’s privacy, it blurs a line between activism and harassment. I’m not sure if it’s even that blurry. It’s harassment,” said CNN’s Don Lemon on Monday night. “Very few arguments, if any, have been won by yelling at someone in a bathroom. OK?”
“I said the same thing when Tucker Carlson was accosted in a fishing store this summer. It was going too far then, and it is going too far now,” Lemon said.
The top-rated host in cable news, Tucker Carlson, forthrightly condemned the protesters’ aggressive actions on Fox News Tuesday night and chided President Joe Biden’s nonchalant response. “It is not normal to harass someone in a lady’s room, period. It’s not acceptable,” said Carlson. Yet the Biden administration “has no problem when its political allies terrorize sitting U.S. senators in bathrooms. … Joe Biden has no problem with it; he said that yesterday. But you should have a huge problem with it. This is the path to chaos and violence.”
Turning to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to have the federal government investigate parents who complain at public school board meetings, Carlson said Democrats in government “have a problem with you — the person who pays taxes, sends your child to public school. They’re telling you that you have no right to be outraged, and the school teaches your children they can change their gender at will and that white people are evil. There’s not a problem at all. The problem is you complaining about it, and if you do, the DOJ will target you like a domestic terrorist using the Patriot Act.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.