Black Americans risk being shunned by their communities if they do not fall in line and vote for Kamala Harris, Joy Reid has warned her followers.
In an apparent bid to shame support for the vice president and away from Donald Trump, the firebrand MSNBC host warned black voters they were going to look ‘real weird and real lonely’ if they do not back the ‘woman of color extraordinaire’ in November’s presidential election.
At the same time, she renewed hostilities with black model Amber Rose, who infuriated the liberal talking head by speaking in support of Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention last week.
‘The door needs to close behind Amber, and she look crazy over there. But shut the door behind her,’ the liberal anchor told her near two million followers on Twitter.
But Reid’s finger-wagging demands quickly sparked accusations of race-baiting and a furious backlash against being told to vote along racial lines.
‘No merits. Just special boxes being ticked,’ one post read. ‘Black, Woman, First black woman.’
Reid appeared determined to hammer home her message as she delivered her close-up piece to camera in a two-minute message to the people she greeted as ‘fam’.
She began the screed by pronouncing: ‘Given the just stratospheric entrance of Vice President Kamala Harris into the presidential campaign – and she has now secured enough delegates to become the nominee – you’re going to look real crazy being on the other side of that line, particularly as a person of color.
‘But really as anyone who claims to have any connection to the culture.
‘You really going to look crazy being on that side given the cultural phenomenon of Vice President Kamala Devi Harris,” Reid continued.
‘She’s about to make history. She’s about to become the first woman president.’
The Brooklyn-born Harvard graduate fiercely resisted the deafening chorus of demands for Joe Biden to withdraw from the race as she broadcast from the RNC last week, suggesting that his brush with Covid was as heroic as Donald Trump’s defiance in the face of an assassin’s bullet.
‘Should he (Biden) be fine in a couple of days, doesn’t that convey exactly the same thing?’ she suggested.
And she suggested the Secret Service had conspired with Donald Trump to allow him a photo-op in the seconds after he was shot at his campaign rally on July 13.
‘Donald Trump is an elderly man who for whatever reason was given nine seconds to take an iconic photo-op during an active shooter situation.
She earned a furious clapback from Rose after sneeringly dismissing the model as ‘racially ambiguous’ following her appearance at the RNC.
‘I don’t want to say she’s black because she has said she’s not,’ Reid claimed.
‘This woman who is of whatever race that she has claimed, she’s said she’s not Black, but [the RNC] brought somebody whose whole career is based in Black culture.’
The model, who used to date rapper Kanye West, hit back at the host insisting ‘I’ve never said I wasn’t Black’.
‘I said I identify as biracial,’ she added in a now-deleted tweet.
‘I’m not going to invalid my white father to make you feel more comfortable.
‘Stop being a race baiter ur president does enough race baiting for all of us.’
Reid warmed to her theme in Tuesday’s tweet, insisting that Harris ‘brings together all the aspects of the culture’.
‘She’s about to make history. She’s about to become the first woman president,’ she predicted.
‘She brings together the African-American community the AAPI community, younger people, she is a whole meme.
‘She would be the first person like from HBCU, like regular real world to be president of the United States.