Joy Reid Blasts ‘Offensive’ Misuse of White House in RNC Pageantry: ‘These Are Not Monarchs…That’s the American People’s House’
MSNBC’s Joy Reid called out President Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to deploy the White House, which is federal government property, for many moments of pageantry during the second night of the Republican National Convention.
In her initial response to the 150 minutes of the RNC’s second installment, Reid drilled into what she saw as “the misuse” of the presidential residence and grounds for overly political purposes to make the case for Trump’s re-election.
“They surrounded themselves with the trappings of the power that, in theory, they were given by the American people,” Reid emphasized. “These are not monarchs. This is not their property. You know, this was not an episode of Cribs. I didn’t need Melania to come strolling down, you know, the [Rose Garden] gallery way as if she’d just come from the living room in her home. But they use the — they have used the property of the American people, these sacred properties that are owned by the American people, for politics tonight in a way thatt I think is offensive, I think is wrong.”
The MSNBC host then turned to the naturalization ceremony held in the White House that acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf presided over in his official capacity, which was widely viewed as a clear violation of the Hatch Act that prohibits the use of government for political purposes.
so chad wolf, who is illegally performing the duties of DHS head, broke the law by conducting a naturalization ceremony as part of a partisan event at the White House. do i have that right?
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) August 26, 2020
This is an unprecedented abuse of the president’s power. A pardon, and now a naturalization ceremony.
If Obama had done something like this, Republicans would have stormed the White House gates with torches.
— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) August 26, 2020
This is un f’n believable. The most anti-immigrant President in history staging a naturalization ceremony in the WH, with military in uniform, FOR A POLITICAL CONVENTION. infuriating.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) August 26, 2020
“Even worse was the naturalization ceremony that really stuck out to me tonight as the thing that is staying with me as I walk away from this. My mother did that ceremony. When my mother came from Guyana, she was here for about 16 years before she became a naturalized American citizen,” Reid explained. “And that ceremony has such deep meaning for the people who become Americans. Donald Trump made that ceremony about him. He made that ceremony about celebrating Donald Trump.”
“He’s denying access to that ceremony to all of these other people. And he did one spefically for politics, specifically for his re-election. He uses those people as props. He used people that would be from the ‘s-hole countries’ he would not let into this country,” a clearly livid Reid added.
“Donald Trump used a color collection, a sort of crayon box of colors tonight to try to paint a false image of himself as welcoming to immigrants and welcoming to black people and brown people,” she railed. “It was offensive to see that done in the people’s house. That — the naturalization ceremony is a sacred thing to a new Americans. It is not about Donald Trump, and he made it about Donald Trump, and he used the people’s, that’s the American people’s house.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
