MSNBC host Joy Reid said Tuesday that white Christian men in America are "increasingly open" about their willingness to enact apartheid to ensure their control of the government.
In a clip flagged by Grabien editor Tom Elliott, Reid argued "wealthy white Christian men" are inspired by South Africa's past oppression of its nonwhite population. At an American Federation of Teachers event titled "In Defense of American Democracy," featuring former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Reid spoke on a panel about how "fragile" democracy is.
"Democracy is extremely fragile, and multiracial democracy is so fragile we're practically the only one that's pulled it off," she said, noting how her father grew up in the Congo, which had "a system of minority rule based on tribe."
She said America has a similar problem because it has "a very determined minority—in this case, wealthy white men and wealthy white Christian men and Christian Americans who are of the fundamentalist variety."
She said those men, who support President Donald Trump as an "avatar" for their movement, are happy to use South Africa's infamous system of racial oppression to "maintain power forever."
"If they have to pull the South Africa model to maintain power forever they will do it, and they're not afraid of it, and they're increasingly open about it," she continued. "Donald Trump is merely the avatar for this, he didn't create it. He simply benefited from it, and I think the sooner that the majority, the actual numerical majority in this country, figures that out and stops treating these elections as just foregone conclusions that you can fix it with just a simple election and that it will be free and fair, the sooner that we will wake up and actually have majority rule in this country."
At AFT's event, Hillary Clinton spoke about dangers to democracy, including Russia and voter suppression. Putting some of the blame onto the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder ruling, Clinton said no longer having "the protection of the Voting Rights Act" contributed to her loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Clinton went on to allege a vast array of measures, including voter ID requirements, constituted voter suppression. Reid has made similar claims about the Supreme Court supposedly gutting the Voting Rights Act, and recently championed Stacey Abrams, who has claimed the Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from her, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Reid has also come under fire for failing to provide evidence of her claim that hackers created a series of fake posts on her blog to discredit her. The posts, which were up for years on her blog "The Reid Report," contained homophobic language, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and other inflammatory material. She apologized but also alleged some of the posts were the product of "hackers" and called for a federal investigation. She later dropped the call for an investigation.