Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may be ending his three-decade Senate career with a whimper, but he knew how to punch — literally and figuratively.
“My life’s work has been to make Nevada and our nation better,” the Nevada lawmaker said in a video statement that declined to mention how the Democrats lost a Senate majority and most major Nevada offices on his watch. “Thank you for giving me that wonderful opportunity.”
But even before Reid became President Obama’s right-hand man in the Senate, the former boxer was known for his ability to keep opponents in check, even if it meant the occasional provocative remark.
From accusing Republican lawmakers of conspiring to poison voters to suggesting the president’s Tea Party critics were racists, Reid’s long career in the U.S. Senate has been marked by brutal comments aimed at a great many people.
Here are nine of the harshest things Reid has said about people who have crossed him and his allies:
1. Doing Koch
Reid has in recent years become fixated on multibillionaire duo Charles and David Koch, repeatedly attacking the libertarian-leaning brothers by name from the floor of the U.S. Senate.
“These two brothers…are about as un-American as anyone that I can imagine,” the Senate leader said in February 2014. “It’s too bad that they are trying to buy America. And it’s time that the American people spoke out against this terrible dishonesty of these two brothers.”
Later, in May of the same year, Reid accused the brothers of conspiring to create “climate change.”
“While the Koch brothers admit to not being experts on the matter, these billionaire oil tycoons are certainly experts at contributing to climate change. That’s what they do very well,” he said.
Reid’s claim that the Kochs want to “buy America” and that they’ve infected U.S. politics with “dark money” were not one-time events. These were charges that he made repeatedly from the U.S. Senate and elsewhere.
2. Romney tax slur
In 2012, as Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney squared off in the presidential election, Reid did his part for the president by baselessly accusing the Republican presidential candidate of being a tax cheat.
“[Romney has] refused to release his tax returns, as we know. If a person coming before this body wanted to be a cabinet officer, he couldn’t be if he did the same refusal Mitt Romney does about tax returns,” Reid said in August 2012.
“So the word’s out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t,” he said.
Reid never attempted to substantiate the claim.
“I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes. Why didn’t he release his tax returns?” Reid asked reporters when asked for proof of his charge.
The senator later quietly abandoned the accusation. He never revealed the supposed sources of his false claim.
3. Calling Petraeus a liar
In 2007, Reid heavily suggested that General David Petraeus was lying when he told Congress that the surge in Iraq was seeing positive results.
“No, I don’t believe him, because it’s not happening,” Reid said in a CNN interview when asked to respond to Petraeus’ Iraq briefing.
At the time of Reid’s remarks, Petraeus was the senior ground commander of U.S. forces fighting in Iraq.
When asked to expand on his comment, Reid told reporters that Petraeus “has made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual.”
4. Also calling Bush a liar
When former President George W. Bush added his support to a project to deposit nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., Reid was not at all thrilled.
“President Bush is a liar. He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country…All Americans should be concerned, not just because he lied to me or the people of Nevada and indeed all Americans, but because the president’s decision threatens Americans’ lives,” Reid said in March 2002.
Later, in a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, Reid stood by the comment.
“You’ve called Bush a loser,” the interviewer said.
“And a liar,” Reid responded.
“You apologized for the loser comment,” Rolling Stone said.
“But never for the liar, have I?” Reid shot back.
5. ‘First-class rat’
In 2012, Reid and William Magwood of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission butted heads over the question of whether the nation’s nuclear waste should be deposited at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
When Magwood, a Democratic appointee, intimated support for the Yucca project in public, Reid claimed the nuclear commission official told him the exact opposite in private.
“That man I will never, ever forget what a treacherous, miserable liar he is,” Reid said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “He’s a first-class rat. He lied to [White House aide Pete Rouse], he lied to me, and he had a plan. He is a tool of the nuclear industry. A tool.”
Reid also accused Magwood of being “unethical” and “incompetent.”
“Magwood was a s**t-stirrer,” Reid said.
6. Bogus SCOTUS justice:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has long been a target of derision from left-leaning commentators and Democratic lawmakers.
But for Harry Reid, Thomas’ career in law is more than just a topic for criticism. Thomas is an “embarrassment.”
“I think that his opinions are poorly written. I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice,” Reid said in 2004. “I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.”
7. Reid really doesn’t like the Tea Party
For Senator Reid, there is no practical difference between the 21st-century Tea Party movement and violent 20th-century anarchists.
“Who is the Tea Party? Well, understand, when I was in school, I studied government, among other things, and prior to World War I and after World War I we had the anarchists,” Reid said in an interview in 2013. “Now they were violent — you know, some say that’s what started World War I, the anarchy moment — but they were violent. They did damage to property and they did physical damage to people.”
The senator explained that the similarities between anarchists and the Tea Party were rooted in skepticism of government.
“[T]hey have the same philosophy as the early anarchists: They do not believe in government. Anytime anything bad happens to government, that’s a victory to them,” he said.
8. The president’s critics are probably huge racists
In a 2013 Nevada Public Radio interview, Reid suggested, heavily, that Republican opposition to the Obama administration may be rooted in racism.
“It has been obvious that they’re doing everything they can to make him fail. I hope that…that’s based on substance, not the fact that he’s African-American,” he said.
Earlier, in 2009, Reid compared critics of the Affordable Care Act, dubbed “Obamacare,” to people who supported slavery in the pre-Civil War era.
“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ‘slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right,” Reid said from the floor of the U.S. Senate. “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ‘slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.'”
He went on to compare GOP opposition to Obamacare to those who opposed efforts to pass civil rights legislation, saying, “When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today.”
But the depth of Reid’s own love for people of color came into question in 2010, when he had to apologize after Bloomberg News’ Mark Halperin and John Heilemann wrote in “Game Change” that the senator was “wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African-American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.'”
9. Republicans literally want to poison you
In 2012, as the senate debated a bill that would extend the payroll tax and do away with an EPA pollution regulation regarding drinking water, Reid accused Republican lawmakers of trying to poison American citizens.
Republicans would extend the tax cut, but only if Democrats “will let us (Republicans) continue to put things like arsenic and mercury in the water of the American people,” Reid said from the floor of the senate.
Reid also accused Republicans of not negotiating in good faith, a comment that found pushback from then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“[W]hen the Majority Leader of the Senate (Harry Reid) comes to the floor and says that Republicans in Congress are only willing to extend this tax cut if they’re allowed to poison Americans’ drinking water, then I think it’s pretty safe to say that they’re the ones who’ve veered away from good faith negotiations,” the Kentucky lawmaker said.
