MSNBC anchor Joy Reid on Wednesday condemned the police response to the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol, imagining a wildly different and deadly outcome had they been Black Lives Matter protesters.
“I guarantee you if that was a Black Lives Matter protest in D.C., there would already be people shackled, arrested or dead,” said Reid. “Shackled, arrested en masse or dead.”
Reid recalled the “severe” police response to protests that erupted following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody, saying “what terrified me in those moments in Baltimore were not the marches” but the “menacing” cops.
The reason Wednesday’s insurrectionists could “so easily and casually with their cameras on film themselves” storming the Capitol and take selfies with officers was because “white Americans aren’t afraid of the cops,” said Reid.
“White Americans are never afraid of the cops, even when they’re committing insurrection and engaged in attempting to occupy our Capitol to steal the votes of people who look like me, because in their minds they own this country, they own that Capitol,” the “ReidOut” host continued.
“They own the cops,” she said. “The cops work for them, and people like me have no damn right to try to elect a president. Because we don’t get to pick the president. They get to pick the president. They own the president. They own the White House. They own this country.”
U.S. Capitol Police, responsible for security at the complex, has been widely condemned for failure to prepare for the pro-Trump onslaught. The police force has not commented on its performance.
Check out Reid’s full monologue here: