November 23, 2017

Happy Thanksgiving. This year I am grateful for Joy-Ann Reid's coverage of the Donald Trump debacle.

Remembering what she said her first show after the election is a reminder of how smart Joy is, and how much her analysis has been proven true over and over again in the year since she said this:

TRANSCRIPT:

Now that I have told you what you won, Trump America, allow me to tell you what you've lost.

You've lost the morality card. No longer can the US go around lecturing the world about democracy, because, in our democracy, the person who got the most votes will not be president. Nor does the party that got the most votes control the House of Representatives. Again, we're required to accept this affront to democracy, because that's our system. But our acceptance doesn't make it any less democratic.

You have also lost the notion of an exceptional America. Because as it turns out, we're just another western nation falling into the ethno-national forces sweeping and swinging across Europe. We, as it turns out, are not so different after all.

You have also lost the right to moralize to Blue America about family values. We sincerely hope and pray that your daughters and your sisters and your wives and all women and girls are never disrespected the way that he has . When your sons and daughters ask you if little girls are as valuable as little girls or should emulate the values of the United States, we'll leave that to you to explain.

And lastly, you have lost the right to rattle on about immigrants. You are now the party of Donald Trump. You saw exactly who and what he was and you chose it. You're going to have to own that. If the incoming president makes you feel proud, I'm very happy for you, but please don't tell the people who are afraid that they have no right to be.

And my friends in the media who are rushing to normalize Trump, who are blindly calling on scared teachers and students to come together and accept what's happening while Donald Trump ushers in an emboldened KKK and will soon have a place in the White House: please remember that nothing has changed about Donald Trump. He is an unpopular person who's under criminal investigation, whose foundation was found to be a sham of self-dealing. And who is in unknown amounts of debt to unknown foreign entities in a way we have never known as a president. He's still the guy who has made racist misogynistic statements that have offended virtually every group in the US. He's still the guy who said this:

...automatically attracted to beautiful women, I just start kissing them, it's like a magnet. And when you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything, you can grab them by the [ bleep ].

We owe it to the country to cover him with clear open eyes. This isn't about access or normalized homogenized politics, or the pageantry of succession. We need to cover the next President with the same cynicism that the current President was treated to. And with the same zeal and skepticism and doggedness that we expended on, oh, I don't know, Hillary's emails. Given how unprecedented what his happening is, including his veiled and not so veiled threats against the First Amendment -- maybe we need to cover him with more toughness and skepticism, and when we come back, we're going to start with what Donald Trump will, won't, can and can't do with Obamacare.

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