MSNBC’s Joy Reid had some gloomy and hysterical predictions for what the future holds if America elects “toy-sized Mussolini Ron DeSantis” in 2024 on Tuesday’s installment of The ReidOut. As Reid tells it if DeSantis were to become president, America would turn into “China, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Iran.”
At the top of her show, Reid previewed what was to come later, “And presidential candidate and toy-sized Mussolini Ron DeSantis unveils his authoritarian manifesto, vowing to destroy leftism and wokeism. So, tell us how you're going to do that, Ron.”
Forty-five minutes later, Reid would attempt to answer that question for him, “The logical implication of DeSantis’s statement about destroying wokeism is if he's elected president, the federal government would ignore your material and economic needs and instead would micromanage every aspect of your life.”
After worrying that that DeSantis might “replace the boards of every one of the approximately 6,000 public universities in this country,” Reid moved on to “he's going to need some de facto morality police to monitor what you read and ban books in America's 90,000 odd public schools.”
Every state has curriculum standards or makes decisions about what does and does not get placed into school libraries, but only when Florida does it is it, in the words of the graphic behind Reid, “totalitarianism.” And of course, most of the stories coming out of Florida are either fake news or involve sexually explicit material that Reid wouldn’t be able to show on MSNBC.
Presumably referencing banning children from sexually explicit drag shows, Reid moved on “President DeSantis would ban artistic freedom of speech, of course, and wield the federal government like a sledge hammer against businesses who do anything that displeases him and other members of the far-right.”
That law, which naturally Reid never quotes, bans children from “adult live performances" that "depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement." Pretty normal stuff.
Reid also worried about, “A national six-week abortion ban, make America Florida, am I right? You want to control your body anymore, ladies? No, Chairman -- sorry, President DeSantis is going to do that.”
Communist countries love abortion, but recapping all that she just mentioned, Reid still managed to declare, “there is a model for what he wants to do. Just look at China, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Iran where the government censors the media or force feeds a strict religious ideology to children in schools, deploys morality police to make sure you're wearing what they want, learning what they want, doing what they want.”
If you don’t want children growing up in a hyper-sexualized environment, that, apparently, makes you just like the Taliban.
At the same time, Reid put up a screenshot of dictionary.com and continued, “That model also happens to have a name. And it's called totalitarianism, the political concept that the citizen should totally be subject to an absolute state authority. DeSantis's proposal would also require a massive multi-trillion dollar federal investment in a humongous bureaucracy to control and squash unwanted wokeness.”
It would not.
This segment was sponsored by Nutrisystem.
Here is a transcript for the May 30 show:
MSNBC The ReidOut
5/30/2023
7:00 PM ET
JOY REID: And presidential candidate and toy-sized Mussolini Ron DeSantis unveils his authoritarian manifesto, vowing to destroy leftism and wokeism. So, tell us how you're going to do that, Ron.
…
7:45 PM ET
REID: The logical implication of DeSantis’s statement about destroying wokeism is if he's elected president, the federal government would ignore your material and economic needs and instead would micromanage every aspect of your life. So, I guess DeSantis, the DeSantis Administration, would move to replace the boards of every one of the approximately 6,000 public universities in this country that he thinks are too woke.
Like he did at-- to New College in Florida and he's going to need some de facto morality police to monitor what you read and ban books in America's 90,000 odd public schools.
President DeSantis would ban artistic freedom of speech, of course, and wield the federal government like a sledge hammer against businesses who do anything that displeases him and other members of the far-right.
A national six-week abortion ban, make America Florida, am I right? You want to control your body anymore, ladies? No, Chairman -- sorry, President DeSantis is going to do that. And there is a model for what he wants to do. Just look at China, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Iran where the government censors the media or force feeds a strict religious ideology to children in schools, deploys morality police to make sure you're wearing what they want, learning what they want, doing what they want.
That model also happens to have a name. And it's called totalitarianism, the political concept that the citizen should totally be subject to an absolute state authority. DeSantis's proposal would also require a massive multi-trillion dollar federal investment in a humongous bureaucracy to control and squash unwanted wokeness. Let me guess, he’ll get Mexico to pay for it?
