Joy Reid Accuses George Santos of Throwing ‘White Power Sign’ During Speaker Vote

MSNBC’s Joy Reid accused Rep.-Elect George Santos (R-NY) of throwing up a “White power” sign while voting against Black Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) for House speaker.

Santos, who lied about his credentials to get elected, has voted for Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the gavel since voting began on Tuesday. On Friday night’s edition of The ReidOut, the host implied Santos voted for McCarthy when Donalds appeared on ballots this week because of the color of his skin.

While addressing The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, Reid ripped House Republicans, who she painted broadly as insurrectionists. She then speculated Santos, who is reportedly of Brazilian ancestry, is a White supremacist.

“This inside coup, which is basically insurrectionist versus insurrectionist, is about committee seats,” she said. “It’s about something as small and mundane as committee seats.” Reid then showed a photo of Santos voting and commented:

And one of the people who will have the power to use that vote of no confidence by himself is this guy. Can we put up George Santos? George Santos, who we don’t know anything about his background because he lied about it all, and who appeared today to throw the White power sign when he voted on the second round of the Kevin McCarthy vote.

This was not in today’s vote, either today or it might have been yesterday. He did that. And one of the people that was on the ballot at that time, of course, was Byron Donalds, who is Black.

Reid said MSNBC had been unable to reach out to Santos to ask him for comment on the matter because he has yet to be sworn in. She asked Miller for comment on what she suspected was a “White power” sign.

“Yeah. I don’t – he might have been holding his fingers together,” Miller said. “There’s plenty of bad things about George Santos without me reading into his body language.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.