Joy Reid’s Aggressive, Inept Interview of Congressman Byron Donalds Demonstrates What Her Show is All About

What is the point of Joy Reid’s show, The ReidOut on MSNBC?

As her conversation with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) — who emerged as a conservative alternative to Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) during last week’s House Speaker race — made clear, Reid is not in the anchor’s chair to dutifully inform, intelligently question, or engage in meaningful conversations.

The interview covered several topics seemingly selected for the sole purpose of Reid catching Donalds not knowing what he was talking about — a goal unrealized.

For example, in a discussion about entitlements, Donalds asked Reid if she knew “that Social Security is going to be insolvent in 2035.” His timeline is actually generous. According to the Social Security Board of Trustees, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will be insolvent by 2033.

Reid did not accept his claim. Instead, she replied “that’s actually not true.” She then repeated “that’s not true” not once, not twice, but a total of eleven times before accusing Donalds of seeking to privatize the program.

When the congressman attempted to reply by pointing out that “when you actually look at the returns of the market —” Reid’s record broke again. “No, no, they’re not, they’re not, that’s not true, that’s not true, that’s not true,” she interjected, the antecedent unclear.

Eventually, Donalds was able to complete his thought. “If you look at the S&P 500 from 2006 until today, the growth rate in the S&P 500 would more than take care of Social Security, way more than the federal government has,” he said.

On January 1, 2006, the price of the S&P 500 was $1,278.73. This morning it opened at $3,932.35, meaning it’s grown by more than 200% over the last 17 years. The Social Security OASI fund, meanwhile, has reaped annual interest rates of between .99% and 4.8% over the same period, landing between 1% and 3% most years.

Nevertheless, Reid responded to Donalds by declaring “we’re not going to have a whole long thing on Social Security.” We wouldn’t want that, now would we?

Of more interest to Reid was submitting to Donalds that his candidacy had merely been an exercise in performative affirmative action by his Republican colleagues.

After asking about his qualifications and repeatedly interrupting him as he explained them –“we have to have a conversation!” exclaimed Reid after cutting him off yet again — she launched into a monologue in which she claimed Donalds “got into it back and forth with a fellow congresswoman who was critical of the nomination because it definitely looked like they were looking for a response to [Democratic leader] Hakeem Jeffries in you.”

What Reid characterized as getting “into it back and forth with a fellow congresswoman” actually involved Donalds being dismissed by Missouri Democrat Cori Bush as “a prop” who “despite being Black… supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.”

“His name being in the mix is not progress—it’s pathetic,” Bush said.

Donalds responded to Bush’s attack on Fox News.

“That sucked,” he lamented. “If you see a Black man rising, let the man rise, even if you don’t agree with him.”

Reid doubled down on Bush’s claim.

“Do you not believe that the idea was to make a diversity statement by nominating you?” Reid asked after a long preamble suggesting that she did, for her part, believe as much. Donalds responded gracefully, noting he was in the room when he was chosen and that he was selected on the basis of his strengths rather than his skin color.

The ReidOut has no time for a more-than cursory discussion of the impending fiscal cliff the country is headed for, and a surplus of it for racially-charged accusations that in any other context would be regarded as indefensible.

So what’s the point of The ReidOut? The interview with Donalds provides a simple answer: It’s schadenfreude for those who share Reid’s narrow worldview. It’s a demonstration to that audience that the conservative perspective is so odious as to warrant total war, so ignorant as to not warrant sound argument, and so dangerous as to warrant being drowned out.

It’s mean-spirited, substance-free fan service, epitomizing everything that is wrong with the partisan corners of the media landscape.

But while its goal is to demean the audience’s political opponents, the show also reflects Reid’s estimation of that audience’s worth. Does she think them so incapable of grappling with policy questions that she needs to shield them from them? So vindictive that they’d like to spend their evenings watching one person treat another with disdain?

If so, that disdain, however veiled, extends to the audience too.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.