MSNBC 'sJoy Reid hit back at FoxNews 'Tucker Carlson for repeatedly calling her "the race lady."- Reid said Carlson is "fixating on race" and stoking viewers' opposition to affirmative action.
- She accused him of "making America worse" by promoting conspiracies and COVID-19 misinformation.
MSNBC host Joy Reid devoted a segment of her Monday-night show to defending herself against Tucker Carlson's attacks, and she accused the Fox News host of "making America worse" by fueling "paranoia" and division.
Carlson has repeatedly called Reid, who is Black, "the race lady" and attacked her for promoting COVID-19 mitigation practices, including wearing a mask in crowded public places.
"Well, Joy-Ann Reid, the race lady over at MSNBC, took a quick break from haranguing whitey yesterday to reveal something deeply personal about herself on television," Carlson said in one recent segment.
Reid said Carlson weaponizes race, and that he regularly mocks her Harvard education to fuel his viewers' opposition to race-based affirmative action.
"Did he say 'whitey'?" Reid said. "Oh, honey. Honey. Tuckums. Is this really about me fixating on race, or is it about you fixating on race? I mean, when you recently went off on me for continuing to mask up post-vaccine while jogging in crowded Central Park, you weirdly, as you did in that montage, threw in my attending Harvard. And I don't know, maybe I'm sensitive to this stuff, but it felt kind of like a dog whistle."
-The ReidOut (@thereidout) May 3, 2021
Reid mocked Carlson, suggesting he was jealous of her admission to Harvard. She added that she got into the Ivy League school because she "had a really high GPA and fantastic SAT scores," and that affirmative action involves universities searching "for smart people from diverse backgrounds so that these schools won't be as dry as all the major sports leagues were before they desegregated."
Reid accused Carlson of "making America worse" by promoting skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines and a white-supremacist conspiracy theory that Democrats are "importing" immigrants to "replace" Americans.
"People like you, and your friends, and the BS factory are keeping us steeped in COVID sickness, and rage, and paranoia," she said. "And the ways in which you, lil Tucker, are making America worse are why I will continue to keep my mask on in a crowd."