Carlson has been on a crusade of deliberately targeting journalists for threats and worse by demonizing them on his show. He also holds a long-standing racial resentment toward Reid. But lately, he has cranked up the racial attacks on her.
Fox’s White Nationalist star seems to have been so pleased with his latest racist Reid insult that he can’t stop repeating it, as a Media Matters roundup shows.
On April 28, 2021, Carlson introduced a clip of Reid by saying, “Well, Joy-Ann Reid, the race lady over at MSNBC, took a quick break from haranguing whitey yesterday to reveal something deeply personal about herself on television.”
The clip showed Reid exulting over being fully vaccinated. But she committed the Tucker Carlson sin of wearing a mask while jogging outside. That's almost as bad as being a Black Lives Matter supporter.
But the possibly even bigger sin was Reid taking a veiled dig at Carlson, who has told viewers to report parents to police if their kids wear masks outside and to harass anyone else who dares to do so.
“Should people be freaking out that some people like myself are still wearing masks outdoors?” Reid pointedly asked her physician guest. Carlson ended the clip before the doctor could answer, which makes me suspicious Carlson wanted to hide the response from his viewers. He went on to accuse Reid of having “joined Team Pfizer” and having “sworn allegiance to the creepy multinational pharma-conglomerate that made it.” Reid had said no such thing.
On April 27, Carlson sneered, “Here’s the race lady on MSNBC, finally putting her Harvard degree to work.” Ironically, the guy who wants to turn his viewers into mask snitches and harassers, ranted that it’s none of her business to accuse those who refuse to get vaccinated of “reckless endangerment.” “Your body your choice, remember?” Carlson said, apparently unaware of what a hypocrite he was making of himself.
On April 22, Carlson returned to one of his favorite white supremacy themes: painting Blacks as overly-privileged. Acting as if he’s just a regular Joe, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (of the Swanson frozen food fortune) whined about Reid’s comments on the police killing of Ma’Khia Bryant: “Joy Reid, the race lady over at MSNBC, has lived what seems like an unusually privileged life. She grew up in Denver, the daughter of a professor, then she went to Harvard.” His particular beef this time was Reid saying she saw a lot of knife fights in school because Carlson, who attended an elite boarding school, is absolutely certain that could never have happened.
On March 8, during a tirade about a woman getting tasered for not wearing “an obedience mask,” Carlson shouted that “race lady” Reid is “Harvard educated but totally oppressed!”
Media Matters has lots of information about ways to hold Carlson accountable.
