When Joy Reid lines up her facts and starts rapid-firing, everyone should just stand back and let the missiles land on their target. Today it was Mitch McConnell.
October 6, 2018

Joy Reid gets it. And she's trying hard to make sure MSNBC viewers get it too, even if Chris Matthews and Hallie Jackson are a little slow on the uptake.

After Mitch McConnell went to the Senate floor to reassure everyone that these things blow over the way they always do as long as Republicans win, he said that "the mob" had energized Republicans for the midterms.

This, by the way, is today's talking point. As if to say that if we had all just stayed meekly home and acquiesced (Bend over little girl, and Daddy will make it all right) we would have swept the midterms with stunning success.

But instead "the mob at the gate" showed up so shame on us.

Joy Reid was not having it for a minute, even as Chris Matthews repeated his words as if they were gospel.

Joy shot back, "And the mob are WOMEN."

"Mitch McConnell -- his breathtaking hypocrisy is almost creepily admirable," she observed. "He can pretend that history hasn't happened."

Warming up, she began to list McConnell's accomplishments. "This is the man who broke the United States Senate. This is the man who presided over a record number of filibusters, who said they would make President Obama a one-term president, who said ,'You will not fill this Supreme Court seat' to the President of the United States, who claimed for himself the sole right to decide what President gets to fill a Supreme Court seat," she said, voice rising as she ticked off all of the ways he's wrecked our government.

Not pausing to let anyone interject, Reid went on: "To almost 400 days in the end, this man HELD OPEN the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia, not let the President, duly elected, who won a MAJORITY of the popular vote unlike the current guy, he wouldn't let him fill a Supreme Court seat."

"Merrick Garland still sits on a Federal Appeals Court, not even spoken to!" she exclaimed. "Senate members wouldn't even meet with Merrick Garland!"

Winding up her thoughts, she said, "Mitch McConnell's hypocrisy is so unbelievable! I cannot believe that there is a human being, a figure in American politics who can break the United States Senate, deploy the nuclear option to force through Neil Gorsuch, and then claim that Democrats are the ones who destroyed the comity!"

At that point, Chris Matthews could take no more. Joy Reid had delivered enough truth to him in staccato sentences that he was compelled to talk over her, and he had the nerve to throw Louis Farrakhan in her face as someone who knew how to use righteous indignation as a weapon. (Do not miss the look on her face during this exchange.)

Matthews pointed out that McConnell uses righteous indignation to claim he's the victim, a point Joy jumped on.

"Claiming to be a victim while presiding over pure unadulterated power," she said, claiming the last word and the victory in that conversation.

More like this, please. When Joy Reid gets going, she's unstoppable.

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