Today was the last day of Joy Reid anchoring AMJoy. Amidst the tributes to her and well wishes, there were some great moments, even on this last broadcast with her at the anchor desk. But all of them paled in comparison to Rob Reiner blasting Trump with truth bombs over and over again.
When Joy asked him whether he thought things would be this bad, Reiner let fly. "I knew he was incompetent and I knew he was a failure as a businessman and a person I knew he had racial leanings, racist leanings," Reiner replied. "But, you know, you always hope that he'll surround himself with people that will be able to, you know, read and that he wouldn't have to."
But..but...he passed the cognitive test!
Still, Reiner admitted he never thought it was be as bad as it is right now, which is probably a thought most of us had since we didn't include a global pandemic on our 4-year Bingo cards.
Reflecting on John Lewis' death and Martin Luther King's promise that the arc of justice bends toward justice, he observed: "We all thought when Barack Obama got elected, we were on a glide path and that we were moving in the right direction and finally, finally we would start realizing what this whole wonderful experiment was going to lead to and then to go from a Black American to a racist in the White House, it's like a gut punch."
"I mean, it is good versus evil, it is love versus hate and [Lewis] embodied good and love. And he believed that ultimately that would win out so I believe that's what's going to happen here we have this last -- you said it in the early clip, this last moment of a desperation by white supremacists in this country to hang on for dear life for this horrible legacy that the country started with and maybe, maybe it took this kind of backlash from Obama to Trump to really push us forward."
I sure hope he's right. But there is some work to do first.
"But, first, we've got to get rid of this man," he warned. "He's a criminal, he's a racist, he's dumb and we got to get rid of him. Once we do, we can start the process of healing the country and actually delivering racial justice."
But he was not done. The topic moved to the anti-maskers and how to deal with the fact that Trump made it political. Once again, fire rained down on Trump. No viewer could watch this and underestimate the passion and fire with which Reiner spoke.
"It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous the fact that this man in the White House could polarize, could make a partisan issue out of life and death is insane," he said.
"I'm calling on Anthony Fauci and the head of the CDC and scientists and doctors to come out and denounce Trump, come out en masse, in force, and say the president is wrong for whatever reasons, we've got to stand on that and we've got to wear masks," he continued.
"We got to stop it. We're being killed by the thousands, and this has to stop. The only way it'll stop is if those people do what Vindman did, come out and say enough it's one thing to be a moron and a racist, but now you're killing us."
Amen, Rob Reiner. And best wishes to Joy Reid on her new prime time show in the slot where Chris Matthews used to be.
