Joy Reid gets blowback from all sides for ‘misleading and ridiculous’ smear of conservative

Is Joy Reid trying to earn herself a Fake News Award?

The MSNBC host received bipartisan censuring this week for a tweet that falsely accused a conservative columnist of claiming he would be willing to risk nuclear war if it would only affect minorities and Democrats.

SG MSNBC Joy Reid
(Photo: Screen Capture).

Reid took aim at National Review contributor David French, whose Monday post reflected on Saturday’s false ballistic missile alert in Hawaii and called on Americans to make preparations for survival in the event of an attack.

In the piece, French urged readers to “prepare to live,” rather than spending crucial pre-strike moments bidding farewell to loved ones.

“First, you have to understand that the odds are overwhelming that you’ll survive an initial blast,” French wrote. “Nuclear weapons are devastating, but it’s a Hollywood myth that any individual strike will vaporize an entire American city, much less the suburbs and countryside.”

David French. (Photo: Facebook).

The National Review regular noted that “[a] strike would devastate central Honolulu but leave many suburbs intact.”

Some outlets misrepresented French’s point. A Newsweek/Raw Story article focused on the fact that in the 2016 election, President Trump beat Clinton in the suburbs and rural areas–the places French said would be less affected in a nuclear strike against a major US city.

Reid apparently went by such second-hand accounts rather than the source piece when she excoriated the conservative commentator.

“We have truly entered the age of insanity when the conservative argument in favor of risking nuclear war is, ‘don’t worry, it will only kill Democrats and minorities’” Reid wrote in a since-deleted tweet. “Shame on you @DavidAFrench.”

French himself responded, slamming the tweet as “misleading and ridiculous.”

Yashar Ali of the Huffington Post criticized the MSNBC host for her “unfair characterization.”

Fellow National Review writer Jim Geraghty also called Reid out.

Other Twitter users piled on to mock Reid.

Following the vehement response, Reid walked back on her condemnation of French, calling her take on the article “off track.”

Reid may have missed the cutoff date for President Trump’s Fake News Awards, but if she keeps this up she’ll be a shoe-in for next year.

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