Although she did not apologize, MSNBC’s Joy Reid acknowledged that a question she posed to a panel on her show earlier this week was not asked in an “artful way” after she faced accusations of pushing Islamophobia.
“There was a lot of conversation, particularly online, after the segment aired, some of which was frankly not in good faith,” Reid said on her show Wednesday, directing the critique at some of her detractors. “But some of the conversation reflected the genuine feelings of people who have been subjected to the kind of stereotyping that I just described. And who take matters like this to heart because of it. And we should all be sensitive to that, and I certainly should have been sensitive to that.”
Reid was addressing the backlash which originated from a segment on her Monday evening episode in which she asked her panel if President Trump is “radicalizing” his supporters to conduct vigilante violence and if that is comparable to Muslim extremists getting radicalized. She had on Newsweek editor-at-large Naveed Jamali, who was on the panel when she asked the question, as well as Dalia Mogahed, from the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding, to discuss the backlash on Wednesday.
Reid played a clip from the Monday panel, during which she asked if Trump was acting the “way Muslims act” and radicalizing his supporters after he refused to condemn the 17-year-old who has been charged in connection to the fatal shootings of two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after which she conceded, “Not exactly the most artful way asking that question, obviously, based on the reaction. But Naveed, can you contextualize it a better way of making that point just from a national security point of view.”
She noted, “The way I framed it obviously did not work,” and provided a chance for Naveed to comment.
Jamali defended her, saying that he interpreted her question as one that brought up “this double standard that exists when we talk about brown and Muslim people in this country and how we hold us to a monolithic standard.”
Mogahed also defended Reid’s inclusion of Muslim voices on her show but added, “The way that it landed and the way that it was heard by some people, many people, in fact, was unintentionally saying that Muslims were inherently violent or that Muslim society — the way in which Muslims act is violent. Though that was not your intention, it is important to correct that notion for your millions of viewers.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, liberal Democrats who were the first Muslim women elected to Congress, condemned Reid’s initial statements.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said they spoke with NBC about Reid’s comments, but the network did not respond to requests to confirm the report.
Reid became the host of her new show, The ReidOut, over the summer after former host Chris Matthews abruptly resigned amid accusations of inappropriate workplace behavior. Reid, herself, has faced allegations of making inappropriate and homophobic comments on an old blog.
