MSNBC host Joy Reid does not suffer rude fools lightly. She asks direct questions of her guests and has the facts at her fingertips. Her interview this morning with Donald Trump apologist Pastor Mark Burns was the perfect example for other host of cable news on how to handle guests who won’t answer questions, spew false talking points and fake news. Burns had been trying to justify Trump’s racist comments about Haiti and African countries using Biblical quotes. Joy was having none of it. After putting up with his pontificating for so long, she cut his mike.
“One more question, I will give you one more chance to answer my question, then we’ll be done here,” Reid warned.
“You’re wasting my time when you talk over me and don’t answer my question,” Reid noted.
“You’re wasting my time,” Pastor Burns replied.
“Then good-bye,” Reid replied, ending the segment. “Let’s bring in our panel.”
The look on Joy’s face was priceless but that was not the end of it. Joy’s response is a thing of beauty.
Slightly 45 minutes later, Pastor Burns posted a video on Twitter from the car MSNBC provided him to take him back to his residence, thanking Reid but also criticizing her for sticking up for the people of Haiti — who Trump believes live in a “sh*thole.”
“She’s always been very kind and I think fair to me,” Burns said in the clip shown on AM Joy. “But I think, obviously in the interview that you just saw if you watch Joy, that she should just move to Haiti since she’s more concerned about Haitian immigrants than black Americans here in poverty.”
“Wow” Reid responded. “Let me address you. sir, I always do try to be kind to the people who are on the show, but we’re not friends. You’re somebody that I am glad that you’re willing to come on and I do try to be fair to you and I’m glad that you can see that.”
“As to the idea that I need to move to Haiti to be concerned about the people there; sir, you are a pastor,” she continued. “And in the Bible — you love to quote the Bible. Let me quote you John. It says: ‘Whoever sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?’” [..]
“I too am the child of immigrants and African-Americans and people who consider ourselves African-Americans, some of us have parents who are immigrants,” she added. [..]
“I hope that you will open your heart to the people of this world, to the people of this country and do your duty as a Christian to love your neighbor as yourself,” she stated before sarcastically adding, “But thanks for sharing your views.”
A word of caution to Trump apologists (I’m being kind), don not mess with Joy Reid.