MSNBC political pundit Joy Reid said racists and white supremacists can express themselves more freely in America with Donald Trump as president.
“People are afraid of, not just what he can do, but what he is doing to people, what he is bringing out in people,” Reid said during her Sunday show, later continuing, “You have swatting happening, and Nazis walking around. It is a scary time.”
Reid, an outspoken critic of Trump, often spends hours of airtime on her weekend show highlighting racially-charged incidents of violence against minorities and often draws connections between violent ideological outbursts and Trump’s rhetoric.
FBI data shows hate crimes have been on the rise in America, up 17% between 2016 and 2018. The increase of racial tension in America has led to a feeling of uneasiness among members of the public, Reid argued. She displayed a poll showing more than 30% of respondents saying they are “more anxious” than they were at this time last year and tied those figures to the Trump presidency.
“It’s made people feel more anxious,” she said, adding, “They feel less safe. So the anxiety — everything he does makes people feel worse.”
Democrats and some in the media have blasted Trump’s policies and comments on immigration as bigoted and abhorrent.
After a deadly 2017 clash between white-supremacists and protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump held a press conference during which he said there were “very fine people on both sides” of that conflict, before later correcting himself. The 2020 Democratic primary presidential front-runner Joe Biden has used the episode to highlight the “moral dilemma” America faces with Trump as president.
