Joy Reid Claims Elon Musk Buying Twitter Shows He ‘Misses’ Apartheid South Africa: ‘He Wants That Back’

Joy Reid theorized Tuesday Elon Musk wants to own Twitter because it offers him a way to gain back something lost when his native South Africa ended the practice of apartheid.

Musk offered to buy the social media giant for $44 billion, and Twitter’s board accepted on Monday.

On The ReidOut Tuesday, the host argued Musk’s stated commitment to improving free speech on Twitter is actually rooted in his own apparent racism. According to Reid, Musk is using his billions to gain back some form of personal normality lost when South Africa officially ended its practice of systemic segregation.

Addressing guest Jason Johnson, Reid said conservatives are not content with simply being allowed to speak on mainstream social media platforms. She said Musk has proved the right wants to own and control them.

“They don’t just want to be in the club,” Reid said. “They have been described as being on the outside of the culture looking in through the glass, but they don’t just want to come in. They want to come in and be at the table to punch people in the face and walk around and laugh about it.”

Reid then implied that there are people currently banned on Twitter who are waiting for Musk to unleash them so they can be racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic.

“Twitter is not the government, they are a private company that says you’re not allowed to be a Nazi on Twitter,” Reid said. “There was a time when people had the double hashtags around their names because they were Jewish, and right wingers were saying ‘get in the oven’ any time you made a benign comment on Twitter. They attacked women. The misogyny was crazy on Twitter for a while.”

She then ripped Musk, who she then appeared to suggest wants to bring his native country’s practice of apartheid to the Twittersphere.

“Elon Musk, I guess he misses the old South Africa in the 80s,” she claimed. “He wants that back.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.