Joy Reid: DeSantis ‘sicced’ voter integrity police on black people, ‘taking away’ their ability to vote

MSNBC host Joy Reid, aka the “angry race lady,” is doing her bit to help defeat Florida’s highly popular Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, giving one of his Democratic opponents a platform on her primetime show that remains on the air despite persistent rumors that she will be canceled sometime in the near future.

Sticking to well-established tactics, Reid distorted the truth and tossed around unfounded accusations of racism in response to DeSantis signing into law a bill to help ensure secure and accurate elections. She also bemoaned the elimination of clearly gerrymandered districts to ensure minority representation by claiming DeSantis was instilling gerrymandered districts.

“Today ‘Baby MAGA’ signed a bill that allows him to create his own private police force that is tasked with pursuing alleged election law violations,” Reid spewed. “Just lovely, the ‘Big Lie’ will now have its own battalion of goons. I wonder who they’ll go after first. I think you can guess.”

The answer in her mind being black people, of course.


(Video: MSNBC)

According to the governor’s office, the legislation “will strengthen election security measures by requiring voter rolls to be annually reviewed and updated, strengthening ID requirements, establishing the Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate election law violations, and increasing penalties for violations of election laws.”

“Twenty years ago, nobody thought Florida was a prime example of how to conduct elections, but we have become a national leader by running the most secure elections in the country,” DeSantis said. “We need to do more to ensure our elections remain secure. We have ended ballot harvesting, stopped drop boxes and the mass mailing of ballots, and banned Zuckerbucks, and this bill will give us more resources to make sure bad actors are held accountable.”

Reid then turned her attention to DeSantis signing a congressional redistricting plan that state lawmakers passed last week in a special session — she misrepresented U.S. Rep. Al Lawson, a black Democrat, calling him a state senator while discussing congressional districts.

“The other thing that went somewhat under the radar, unfortunately, is that this Governor demanded that his sycophant legislature literally eliminate [U.S. Rep.] Val Demings’s district and Al Lawson’s, state Sen. Al Lawson’s district, it’s very, very particular, it’s the same area,” Reid said. “So now this part of Orange County will lose its black congresswoman to be replaced presumably by a Republican who he’ll draw some crazy looking district to force a Republican in there, so he’s taken away black representation.”

She went to falsely claim — with the full endorsement of MSNBC and parent company NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast — that Gov. DeSantis was “taking away the ability of African-Americans to vote and he passed this police force that you know is gonna be sicced on black Floridians to intimidate them out of being able to vote.”

Lawson represents a sprawling North Florida district that stretches from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee, well over 160 miles. That district (at the top of the map on the left in blue) and the more geometrically even map DeSantis approved (on the right) are seen below:

Photo Source: Florida’s Voice

DeSantis called for a special session of the Florida Legislature to establish lawful congressional voting districts in March, after vetoing another map produced by the legislature, stating that the district was unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

“We have a responsibility to produce maps for our citizens that do not contain unconstitutional racial gerrymanders,” he said. “Today, I vetoed a map that violates the U.S. Constitution, but that does not absolve the Legislature from doing its job. I appreciate the Legislature’s willingness to work with me to pass a legally compliant map this Special Session.”

It’s rather apparent that Reid — and the Democratic Party — are fine with gerrymandered districts as long as they produce the desirable candidates.

Tom Tillison

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