With only a few days left in this election, MSNBC’s host of “The ReidOut” Joy-Ann Reid joins Errin to discuss combating misinformation, expectations for election night, and the future of American democracy beyond 2024.
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On today’s episode
Our host
Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of The Amendment newsletter. An award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience, Errin was previously a national writer on race for the Associated Press. She’s also worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Follow Errin on Instagram @emarvelous and X @errinhaines.
Today’s guest
Joy-Ann Reid is a journalist, author and the host of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut. Reid has received four NAACP Image Award nominations and The ReidOut received the award for best talk program in 2020.
Follow Joy-Ann Reid on Instagram @joyannreid
Episode transcript
The Amendment podcast transcripts are automatically generated by a third-party website and may contain typos or other errors. Please consider the official record for The Amendment podcast to be the audio publicly available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Errin Haines:
Hey y’all, I wanted to grab you before we get started, because this is our last episode before election day. Now, early voting has already begun in many states. Election day is Tuesday, and as you all know, voting is super important to me. So I hope that you are all out there getting it done. At the 19th, we’ve partnered with the League of Women Voters to make sure that you have all the information you need to participate in our elections process. So go to 19th news.org/vote to learn about early voting, registering to vote, checking your voter registration status, or even getting state specific information about what’s on your ballot. I’ll see all of the polls.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Grandma is on there after church, and she is on Facebook with her friends, and they are sharing all the lies. Okay? Get her off of there. Even if she has to watch Tubi, if that’ll make her stop.
Errin Haines:
Well, ho-We’re not gonna have any Tubi disparagement on this podcast. That’s a whole separate…
Joy-Ann Reid:
Not have any Tu…. Okay. Alright. We won’t do that. Okay. That’s a separate podcast we going do because we do need to talk about that.
Errin Haines:
Hey y’all, welcome to The Amendment, a weekly conversation about gender, politics, and power from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network. I’m your host, Errin Haines. Well, happy Halloween, y’all. Look, as much as I would love to sit back and enjoy some candy, we have gotten an election to discuss because we are now less than a week away from election day. And election season has been underway all month. And while it’s still too early to draw major conclusions, there is some intriguing data. As of October 21, more than 13 million voters have already cast their ballots in the presidential election. Notably, North Carolina and my home state of Georgia shattered records for early voting turnout on its first days. Voters on both sides see this election as pivotal for the future of the country. That said, the early voting landscape does not offer a definitive picture of how the election will unfold.
Errin Haines:
Only that it is likely that, once again, this race could be close. What does this all mean? I needed help making sense of how we should be looking at election night and the results. So I had to call in my good friend and host of MSNBC’s “The Readout,” which I know all of you are watching. She’s also gonna be a part of MSNBC’s Decision 2024 special programming on November 5, so I know you can tune in to get all of your accurate news on election night. That would be my friend, Joy-Ann Reid. Joy is also rebooting her fabulous podcast with her partner in crime, Jackie Reid, “Reid This, Reid That.” The first episode is already out, so give it a listen wherever you get your podcast. Having said all that, Joy, welcome to The Amendment.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Errin, my sister, how are you?
Errin Haines:
How is anyone? I don’t know. We are, I mean, in the home stretch here. Seriously, like, let’s get into it. We are days away from election night. I would just really love to start the conversation by asking you to give our listeners where you are in terms of the state of the election. What’s on your mind headed into the home stretch?
Joy-Ann Reid:
I mean, look, this is a dog fight, okay? And the thing about it is that, you know, we always give this platitude that, you know, this is the most important election of your life. This actually is the most important election of your life. And I think that is why there’s a level of stress and strain that really has not existed for me in an election that I have covered. I think that because you have one candidate who is openly stating that they are going to terminate the Constitution — and that’s a quote. And because you have a candidate who is evincing a level of cognitive decline that is visible and that is also undercovered by our mainstream media. And because you have someone who, his own former employees, including his former chief of staff in the White House, who was his former homeland security secretary as well has said, admires Hitler, whose own former joint chiefs of staff chair has called a fascist to the core and has warned would want to implement Hitlerian style fascism.
Joy-Ann Reid:
It’s just not a regular campaign. This is not Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney or Barack Obama versus John McCain. It’s not even Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton because we didn’t have all that data. We just knew he was a sex pest, but we didn’t know — right? — that he had had done the Access Hollywood tape, but we actually didn’t even know that he’d done the things in the Access Hollywood tape at that point ’cause E Jean Carroll hadn’t come forward. We just had a lot of allegations about him. So we knew ratchet, sort of, awful things about him. But now we know really frightening things about one of these two candidates, and yet it’s tied. That makes I think everyone nervous.
Errin Haines:
Yeah, I mean, I definitely am struck by, one, to your point, going into this year, this was not a status quo election, right? Like, even though you’d still had, you know, a Biden-Trump what looked like a rematch, but like the stakes were very different things in our politics had changed, you know, since the last time these two faced each other. And yes, like Donald Trump has been kind of in our politics for nine years. You know, in 2016, there was a lot that we didn’t know about him. And you’re right. I mean, I think back to that Access Hollywood tape, I mean that it was locker room talk in 2016, right? It was not, you know, adjudicated as fact that he had done some of the things that he discussed doing on that tape. And so to be here where he is somebody that I think the American electorate knows very well, for half the country to still be, you know, saying that despite everything that we now know about him, none of those things are disqualifying for those voters.
And also that they don’t feel like they know enough about Vice President Harris, right? And so that maybe is factoring into what they’re planning to do in an election where we knew democracy was gonna be on the ballot, right? It is fascinating. It is a fascinating moment in our politics and a fascinating moment for just our democracy and the direction of our democracy, because that literally is, kind of, what people are going to the polls to weigh in on — what the future of our democracy is really is really gonna be.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Well, I mean, the thing is, is we don’t know and we do, right? I mean, when Donald Trump ran for president, he was already famous. So this is somebody who had been in our lives collectively as a country. You know, people grew up on “The Apprentice.” People knew him from a frequent interviewee on everything from Larry King to Barbara Walters. He had made himself a celebrity. And so I think part of the disconnect is that when you introduce new information about somebody who’s already a star, right? Americans essentially put aside a lot of negative information — negative new information about Trump — because they’re still living in the Trump from The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice. And so there are people who are just discounting the new information as hyperbole as, “oh, he’s just talking. He’s just the WWE performer.” But my challenge is the massive media failures that have attended this man’s rise to power.
Joy-Ann Reid:
When he ran in 2016, Natasha Stoynoff’s story was already out. This is the journalist who had gone to interview him at Mar-a-Lago, and got shoved up against the wall and he put his tongue down her mouth. That was available information in 2016. At least a dozen of those women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual invasion, they existed. And journalists had the opportunity to talk to them, to track them down, to find them. I mean, George Conway found them and he’s doing ads with them, right? So they existed. And I remember, you know, being on TV at the time and trying to track those women down, none were really willing to come forward because people didn’t wanna be public. They didn’t wanna get in the way. And also I think people didn’t think he’d win. So why make your life, why ruin your life for nothing?
Joy-Ann Reid:
Right? And so I think there was a failure to really vet him. And things about him having Hitler’s speeches by his bedside and his bedside drawer. That was actually known in 2016. I reported it. We talked about it on my old weekend show, “AM Joy.” So there was all this information that was negative, that was this noise in the side. But people set it aside because they’re like, “Well, this celebrity’s running for president, that’s more interesting. Let’s just put him on TV 24/7. Let’s just listen to his rambling speeches and let’s treat him like a non threat.” Well, now we have even more information and the information is terrifying. And what he wants to do is terrifying. And the lack of guardrails put in place because of the Supreme Court he helped to create. We’re in a different place now. And yet I feel like the mainstream media writ large is in the same place they were in 2016. They haven’t adjusted for the new information we now have about this man. And so they’re treating him and Kamala Harris as these two equals. It’s just, “on the one hand, on the other hand.” And she actually is getting vetted harder than he is.
Errin Haines:
Yeah. And also, you know, thinking about everything that you were saying in an election, that is the first election on the other side of the Dobbs decision — the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that ended federal protections for abortion. Thinking about this election as the second election in the “Me Too” era, right? You talked about that ad with, um, you know, kind of accusers that are telling their story about Trump. You know, you have survivors for Harris on a phone call, you know, earlier this month. So we said gender was a thing that was gonna be on the ballot going into this year too, right? For so many reasons. And it sounds like I’m hearing you say that this new negative information and also just the new climate that we are in politically, I mean, that still does not seem to be moving the needle for a lot of voters. And I think, you know, for as much as we know about who he is over these last nine years, it really feels like this election is about who the rest of us are. Like that is the thing that we are going to learn on the other side of this election.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Absolutely. And it’s who we are, but in fragments, right? Because who we are is a fragmented nation. And so you have, I think, to me, two elections going on at the same time. You have an election among high-information voters. These are generally college-educated voters across the racial divide. Black, White, Asian American, et cetera, who consume a lot of news, but who also consume a lot of news that’s outside of the Fox bubble. ‘Cause I set Fox aside. We don’t even call it “Fox News” anymore on my show. You know, there’s a recent CNN story about how carefully they edited his barbershop conversations. Mm-Hmm. Because on the social media side, if you go on Instagram and just look at the raw footage of the actual event that took place when he went in this Bronx Barbershop and talked to, you know, voters of color, he’s rambling all over the place and sounds like somebody who might have dementia.
Joy-Ann Reid:
But on Fox — the edited version of it — he sounds coherent. They chopped it up so much to make his answers make sense. So I set them aside because they’re actually part of his campaign, effectively, in so many ways. But people who are high-information voters, they know that General John Kelly told the New York Times on tape and then said that, yes, you can release this tape, that this man is a fascist. And so they are making decisions. And college-educated women are largely alarmed about the loss of their rights to their bodily autonomy. They’re focused on abortion as an issue. It’s the reason 2022 went the way it did. It was an abortion election. Most of the media said it was gonna be an inflation election. Nah, man, it was an abortion election. And women were very focused, at least college-educated women.
Joy-Ann Reid:
But then you have this non-college population who are largely Donald Trump’s fans. He’s “The Apprentice” amusing guy that they like. And they will not, they don’t get this other information. They don’t know that John Kelly called him a fascist. They don’t know who John Kelly is, necessaril,y because they’re not literally consuming news. What they’re thinking about is, “I don’t like the cost of my rent, I don’t like the cost of food. I’m upset about that… My economic life is right now. And in my mind, he’s a businessman. He’s from The Apprentice. He knows money. He knows how dollars and cents work. I just want more money in my pockets. And I don’t hear this. The rest of that is noise. I don’t even believe you when you tell me he’s gonna terminate, what does that mean? Terminate the Constitution? I don’t believe it.”
Errin Haines:
So to those many constituencies, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are making their closing argument to the American people at these rallies. You know, polls are consistently showing them neck and neck in these battleground states. I’m just wondering, everything that we’re talking about, do you feel like we’re seeing anything from either of these candidates in the home stretch that is going to move the needle at all dramatically even?
Joy-Ann Reid:
So, what I’ve experienced when I look, the way I look at the polls is I tend to just look at Trump’s number, which really hasn’t budged all summer.
And all into the fall, right? He has a ceiling. He’s a 46, 47 percent candidate, and her number, Kamala Harris’s number, sort of levels around that, right? So he’ll sometimes struggle up to 49, you know, and then it’ll be like 49, 50. Like, he’s got a ceiling because, again, he’s so well known, he’s such a known quantity, that he’s not gaining new people because I have not seen him gain new voters. And some people are not on the fence and going, “oh, you know what, I like Trump.” Now, he, generally, what you see happen is people will either say, “I just can’t decide,” and then they just back out and say, “I just can’t vote for either,” right?
Joy-Ann Reid:
Or they’ll say, “Oh, you know what? She’s interesting. Maybe I’ll vote for her.” I have not, I’ve yet to see a lot of movement toward him, maybe one or two. So that’s one factor. But I think on Kamala Harris’ side, she’s doing something interesting. You know, we covered her, both of us covered her, when she ran for president the first time in 2019. And she was a much more, sort of, progressive figure. Like, she was a figure that I would say would be to the left, in a way, of Joe Biden. And then weirdly enough, Joe Biden became president, picked her after Black women demanded it, right? And then he moved to the left of her, like, and people forgot that, “Oh, that’s right, Biden was to the left of Obama.” Like Biden actually pulled Obama to the left.
And so we were reminded that Biden is not the centrist from the nineties that we were remember. He’s really sort of center-left figure. And that has caused some issues for her, you know, because now she’s running on what Biden created: the economy, Biden built, et cetera. And the negative baggage of his Israel and Gaza policy, and all that is still attached to her, but she’s also somebody who’s new. ‘Cause let’s just be clear, nobody pays attention to the vice president. Like, no, all vice presidents are new.
Errin Haines:
They certainly did not. Yeah.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Nobody paid attention to any of ’em. You know, nobody knew Al. When Al Gore ran for president, it was like he was a brand new fool. Like, everybody’s like, “Who’s that?” You know, everybody’s like, “That guy’s been there for eight years.” They’re like, “Oh, really?” Like no one even pays attention to them, right? Mike Pence? No one. They paid attention to him because people were trying to hang him. “Hang Mike Pence” is the most famous thing everyone knows about Mike Pence. Okay, that’s it. So she was not a well-known quantity. So now the people are, after all these, you know, three years of her, she’s new. She’s also a woman. She’s a woman of color. She’s interesting. Let’s just be honest, this is a very, you know, shallow world. She’s pretty, and so she’s got all of these sort of newness factors that I think are causing people to go, “Ooh, who’s that?”
Joy-Ann Reid:
And she’s young. And so the young-old thing now happens. Now Trump’s the oldest guy ever to run for president. So she’s got more opportunity to grow. So, you know, as Simon Rosenberg often says, if I was in this election, I was still in the election game like I used to be, and I’m not anymore. I’d rather be her than him. ‘Cause she’s got newness, she’s got youth, she can introduce herself. And then she’s doing this interesting thing where she’s grabbing those Nikki Haley voters. Going all through those primaries, there was about 16% of the Republican base Trump could not access. Even when it was clear he was going to be the nominee, people still voted for Nikki Haley. Now those voters are still conservative. They’re conservative Republicans, but they’re not Trump Republicans. Kamala Harris is making a very aggressive play for those people.
Joy-Ann Reid:
And she’s taking some risks to do that, ’cause she’s got AOC on her side. She’s got Bernie (Sanders) people on her side. She’s got, you know, liberal democrats are with her. Progressives are with her. Her coalition has a lot of the left, at least the left that’s not Palestine voters, right? And then she’s now got these Republicasn. Kamala Harris is on track to potentially get six, seven, eight percent of the Republican vote. So when we see in Georgia, in your state, or in North Carolina, these streams of voters coming out, and you see that it’s even Republican and Democrat, that doesn’t tell me anything. ‘Cause I don’t know how many of those Republicans are voting for Kamala Harris. And I know when I see, ’cause what I also see is a very female early vote electorate. Heavily female. And White women, 60 percent of them are Republicans. Right? So if a lot of women are coming out, and a lot of Republicans are coming out, if there are White Republicans, those could be Harris voters.
Errin Haines:
They could be, yeah. Some number of them could certainly be supporting Kamala Harris. It’s gonna be so interesting to kind of see what that looks like on the other side of the election — right? — in these exit polls. And if we’re ever gonna know from exit polls, right? Because we’re already seeing reporting that you have women that may go into the ballot box and make a choice that their husbands don’t know about, right? Or that they don’t tell their family about. And also, look, I mean, we are also seeing men, including some Republican men, who are saying that they are supporting Harris. That either, you know, January 6 was a deal-breaker, or that they actually are in support of reproductive rights. I mean, this is a message that they are also open to, uh, this year, some number of things.
Joy-Ann Reid:
And the national security message too, ‘cause remember…
Errin Haines:
Definitely that too, right?
Joy-Ann Reid:
And so Liz Cheney is a national security Republican. Adam Kinzinger, too. Very conservative on things like abortion. Both of them are anti-abortion. Let’s just be clear. They do not agree with Kamala Harris on abortion. Those are not Dobbs Republican voters. Liz Cheney is a national security Republican voter. And so this is the first election after Dobbs. So all of the pre Dobbs metrics do not apply. Is this election like 2020? No, you can’t apply the 2020 metrics ’cause Roe was still in place in 2020. So nothing before Dobbs. The only election that we’ve had that is dispositive of what things could be like now — well, there are multiple — is the midterms in 2022. ‘Cause women are not less mad now than they were in 22 that they don’t have any bodily… No, they’re more mad because more women have died. There’ve been 62,000 babies born of rape that we know of.
Joy-Ann Reid:
There are women actually dying, and we know their stories. So, no, women are not backing down on it on that. But then the other piece is January 6 happened. And so you have national security Republicans, including some very high profile Republicans, 400 some-odd former members of Republican administrations going all the way back to George W. Bush have endorsed Kamala Harris. You don’t think they’re influenced any voters? They are. And so that’s the X factor here is that Kamala Harris is probably gonna do, she’s gonna do more closely to what Obama did in terms of getting White voters. I think she’s gonna get, you know, 40 percent plus of White voters. And I think she’s going to do better with White women than probably any Democratic candidate in our lifetimes.
Errin Haines:
Okay. Joy-Ann is making predictions here, people. I hope you all are listening. We’ll be watching to see how those turn out. But I mean, I do think that you’re making such an important point about two things that are coming into sharp focus in the final days of this election. And that is January 6 kind of coming back around, right, for people. And also the ongoing stories — tragic stories — of women who are dying or near death, you know, because of this post-Dobbs landscape in states across the country. That is something that we have seen since that Dobbs decision for the last two years. Just story after story after story. And those are only the stories that we know that are being reported, right? There are stories in communities, people living with this that is very much affecting, you know, what they’re planning to do at the ballot box. I mean, at The 19th, we were certainly a place that did not predict a red wave because we were hearing from voters, we were hearing from those women, from LGBTQ+ folks, from voters of color who were like, “We are on the receiving end of this decision, and we are furious and we plan to make our voices heard.” Right?
Joy-Ann Reid:
Yeah. I think it was The 19th, the Reid Out and Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier, the four of us were the only ones who were saying..It’s so wild because even at work, like, everyone believed the red wave thing, like everybody believed. And I was like a lonely voice. And I, honestly, this is why I was so glad that you’re my friend, because I was like, “Let’s get Errin on again, y’all,” because literally I feel like we just gonna talk to each other because nobody ain’t listen us. We just saying it’s not a red wave.
Errin Haines:
No red wave. Yeah.
Joy-Ann Reid:
We said it.
Errin Haines:
And also that people were not, like, Dobbs was not gonna fall off the radar for people by November. ‘Cause you remember. I mean, that decision came down in the summer and they were like, “Oh no, that won’t be a factor by November.” It’s like, “No, it will absolutely be a factor.”
Joy-Ann Reid:
I sat in so many rooms where people would list all the important factors in the election and it would go inflation, gas prices, inflation, and, you know, crime. Inflation, gas prices and crime.
And was just told. And then I would just raise my hand and say, “Abortion, abortion, abortion.” And everybody to look at me like, Oh yeah, that was the summer. That was the summer.” I was like, no. And this is why The 19th matters. This is why me having a platform, because women need to be in these rooms when these conversations are being had because all the predictions, it’s the Nate Silvers. It’s a bunch of men. And all of the poll aggregator guys are dudes. And all of the analysts are guys. Most of ’em are men. And so for them, you know, and, as you said, look, abortion is also a men’s issue. If you’re a man who has a daughter, or a wife or just cares about women, you know. So I just think people are constantly under-interpreting the power of that and the power of January 6.
Errin Haines:
So I’m wondering, we talked about, you know, these John Kelly comments, which in some outlets were framed as kind of bombshell remarks, but in other outlets, not so much, right? The framing was more that the Vice President was saying that Donald Trump, you know, is fascist as opposed to a focus on the things that John Kelly said that Donald Trump said to him.
Joy-Ann Reid:
But the reality is, Donald Trump’s admiration for Hitler is a known thing. Again, it was not made a big deal in the New York Times and it was their scoop. The morning after they had what could have been an October surprise for, I guess, for people who haven’t been paying attention, they didn’t even put it above the fold on the front page of their own paper. The Washington Post didn’t report on it at all. AP buried it halfway down their scroll. Reuters buried it. Axios had a small note that didn’t use the word Hitler. Politico buried it lower down on their homepage. Had itbeen released or discovered that Joe Biden had privately praised Hitler, believe it would be on the top of every single page. It would’ve been the number one story all day the next day. Every Democrat would’ve been demanded to answer for whether they have a problem with the president of the United States praising Hitler. If Kamala Harris had been said to have praised Hitler — hell if she had praised, you know, a rapper they didn’t like — you know? If she had disparaged Sexyy Red.
Errin Haines:
We’re old enough to remember when Jeremiah Wright was not okay.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Come on. I mean, Donald Trump isn’t even…every president has been needled about where they go to church and whether they go to church. He doesn’t even do that.
Errin Haines:
In 2016, David Duke was somebody that we raised questions about as a press, right? Like that was something that journalists were asking, you know, asking about his support of Trump, and if he was okay with that, if that was something that he welcomed.
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Tory Gavito:
Hi, I’m Tory Gavito, president and Co-founder of Way to Win.
I’m raising two teen girls and they just night and day from the decision that that President Biden made to Kamala’s launch. I mean, the amount of pride that they have in sharing the memes, I I get more memes from, from these teen girls. And then the conversations that they’re having with their peers. So one of my daughters is 18. She gets to vote for the first time in this cycle. I know a new Texas voter. It’s kind of exciting. And she goes to an all girls school that’s a public school that’s dedicated for primarily girls of color, actually. And they, she, they’re so enthusiastic. It went from her having to really sit at these lunch tables and these conversations with her friends trying to persuade them on why Biden, it wasn’t a lesser of two evil conversation to now just a joyous conversation about the future of America.
So I put some money aside from our funding to grassroots groups and other strategies into what I call the Black Swan Fund for, for major events. And my chief strategy officer, Jen Ancona, who also is one of my co-founders… we agreed to deploy this money to the, to research on Kamala.”
And so we wanted to prove to everybody in the debate about what was going to happen post biden’s debate that Kamala could win. And the, the polls showed that whereas she started where Biden did in terms of her support levels, she had a much higher ceiling and she had a much higher ceiling and could attract the kind of voters that Biden was losing with young voters, voters of color, women voters, um, disaffected Dems who just say PS on everybody’s houses, no one’s listening anymore. You know, just a broad array of people. She could really resonate with our little, um, you know, my family would say our little gran, our little grain of sand that we added to the, you know, the beach on the debate of what should come next was helpful in that it painted this picture for many donors and many Democrats that we gotta keep our coalition together.
You’ve gotta be able to trust black women as part of a, a major force in that coalition. You’ve gotta support Vice President Harris as one of the most electable and credible and capable candidates that we have. And you gotta give President Biden his flowers ’cause he’s done a lot. So our listeners need to keep in mind that we have got to keep doing the work. So it is very easy when we hear headlines like Kamala Harris has raised $1 billion in 80 days, right? She’s raised so much money, it’s easy to be like, well, she’s got it. No, she doesn’t. Got it. We’ve all gotta help. Yes, we’ve all gotta help. Whatever we did in 2018 that led to all those historic firsts in that first midterm post-Trump. We, you know, we were marching, we were writing letters, we were making phone calls, we were volunteering to write checks. We gotta keep it up. I know it feels difficult because we have been fighting this fight for many cycles, and yet it just may be our American duty, right. Electing Vice President Harris as our first woman called the president. So I, I wanna encourage everyone to stay in. And then for listeners who have more to give, right way to win is a hub for donors who can give at various levels, but wanna give at scale and wanna really pull their resources together to make an impact. And so we invite you to learn a little bit more about us too.
Errin Haines:
I want to switch gears and talk about another thing that I know you talk about so much on “The ReidOut,” and something that we certainly have been working to combat at The 19th, and that is mis- and disinformation. How concerned are you about this going into election night?
Joy-Ann Reid:
Very. I mean, you’ve already started to see in the state of Georgia — and actually someone shared with me and I sent it to my producers to check out because I was certainly not gonna post it — people are already alleging that votes are being flipped. That when they vote, their vote is being switched and changed. That’s a problem because it, you know, it reduces trust in elections. And this whole sort of mystery around the machines. People haven’t trusted the machines since 2000. So we’re more than 20 years into a lack of trust in that process. And because each state has its own process, there’s so much room for lying about what’s happening. And Donald Trump has already seeded the ground. He’s already salted the earth when it comes to trust in elections. Polling shows that his base will not believe the election is valid unless he wins. And he’s already said in advance that the Democrats are cheating, and that if he loses it will be because of two things: Democrats cheating and the Jews.
Errin Haines:
Yeah. Just thinking about listening to what you’re saying and thinking about this. I mean, this is also the first election since Elon Musk bought Twitter. And he obviously has definitely factored into this election cycle. I mean, literally he has endorsed Trump, has pumped so much money into his campaign. But also, I mean, this is a very different platform than it was four years ago, even two years ago. There’s a lot of misinformation on this platform. Tons. At best, he’s encouraging it. And, at worst, he’s perpetuating a lot of it.
Joy-Ann Reid:
He’s part of the Trump campaign. He’s on the road. I mean, remember when, I’m old enough to remember when Elon Musk said, in order for Twitter to have validity for people and to be trusted, it had to be politically neutral. Well, now he’s actually part of the Trump campaign. His super PAC is running, literally running, the Trump ground game. The Trump campaign doesn’t have a ground operation. It’s Elon Musk’s PAC doing it, plus Charlie Kirk’s PAC. So it’s literally far-right wing troll entities. And then this is somebody who has defense contracts with the Biden administration and who is being promised a role in a Trump administration to run something called the “Efficiency Department.” Like he’s being basically promised he would get control over part of the government that he’s a contractor to. So we are now in this completely new world where you’ve got mis- and disinformation on all of the platforms, and a lot of people are getting their news straight from TikTok, straight from Instagram, straight from X – Twitter.
Errin Haines:
Well, I mean, so what does that mean for you and how you approach your work in this election cycle? I mean, look, shameless plug, Joy, you have been such a great resource and force for truth in this election cycle. You have talked about mis- and disinformation. You were trying to combat this on your platform and I see you on TikTok doing your thing. Like, talk about how you are trying to use your voice and platform to fight mis and disinformation.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Yeah, I have felt that it isn’t possible to do just through my show. I love my show and I love my team, and we do our best, you know, five nights a week for our one precious hour. But that is a limited audience, right? Cable news only reaches so many people. We’ll reach 1.4, 1.5 million people on a good night. Where we amplify that is that, then, that show is then on YouTube. And I will have people literally come up to me and say, “I watch your show on YouTube.” Or they’ll say, “I love you on Instagram.” There are people who literally only consume my content from Instagram or from TikTok. So I found that I need to be on these platforms other than X, Twitter, which I abandoned because I refuse to do business with Elon Musk.
But I feel like I need to be on these platforms. And I think you agree that we, we can’t limit ourselves to our core platform. If you’re not in the game in social media, you really don’t have a voice because you’re competing with so much noise that you’ve gotta get on the field. So I felt it was important to get on TikTok, get on Instagram, and try my best to be a part of the conversation, to try to combat as much misinformation as I can.
Errin Haines:
There are so many people that do see you as a trusted messenger. And yet, I mean, it’s great that there’s so many people that are interested in our politics, right? They’re engaged in our politics in a way that, um, has not always been the case. And social media has certainly been a big driver of that. But again, like, not all information is good information. And we know that. So how can voters educate themselves and the people around them, the people in their lives who may be getting this missing and disinformation, right? How do they educate themselves and other people about the tactics that are used in misinformation campaign?
Joy-Ann Reid:
I think it’s really important to address it directly. If you have a relative or a friend who’s saying something that is, and you know, is false, you can’t just tell them, “That’s false.” You need to prove it to them. Google is your friend. Whenever I have somebody try to tell me something that isn’t true, I’ll listen to them. First of all, you need to be a listening ear because people sincerely have these beliefs, and they’re getting it from somewhere. My first question is usually, “Where did you hear that?” That is usually a very telling response. “Where did you hear it?” If they say, “Facebook,” Houston, we have a problem, right? That’s usually the place where all the grandmas, all the misinformed grandmas are on Facebook. Let’s just be clear.
Errin Haines:
The lies are thriving on Facebook. They’re thriving.
Joy-Ann Reid:
So I think if you, if somebody confronts you, where did you get that information from? Okay? Be, be a be a listening ear. Don’t ridicule them and then say, that isn’t true, but let me show you that that isn’t true. And then get on that Google show me information. Oftentimes when people are actually confronted by a person they trust who’s not ridiculing them and who’s not disparaging them and who’s open and loving toward them, and then you show them that it isn’t true, people will almost immediately back down. And then you are actually doing good for the world. Because we are right now in a, a, a really scary place in this country where no one is agreeing on the same facts and where we’re living in two functionally different worlds. And it’s not, it doesn’t make the country functional.
Errin Haines:
So, then, if that is the work that we are doing and that you were asking other Americans to do in this moment for their friends and family, like what are some common signs of misinformation that people should watch out for during this election period? Especially in the home stretch where we know it will be ratcheted up?
Joy-Ann Reid:
The one that has been the most prevalent that’s already happening is the idea that if you go in and vote, your vote is gonna be flipped. That you’re gonna vote for person A and get person B. And what I would say to people is the machines — and I have done a lot of research on this, going all the way back to when I was in local news, when this was happening in 2000 — the machines are not networked in a way that somebody could program them to automatically flip votes. They’re just not networked together that way. So that’s not possible. And no one’s gonna run it and program each individual machine to mess up. Dominion and these companies — I don’t like the conservative mindset. I don’t like some of the people who run them — but they’re not, like, programming votes. So that’s the number one piece of disinformation is: “I went to vote for Trump and I got Kamala,” or “I went to vote for Kamala and I got Trump.”
Joy-Ann Reid:
All machines can fail and all machines can screw up. So when you go to vote, what you need to do is you need to do your ballot and they need to look at it. Look at your ballot and make sure it’s accurate. Because any machine can fail. And if you see something wrong, go in and say something and get your vote to count the way you want it to count. I think the second big piece of disinformation, and this is the big one, and this is the one I’m gonna be doing a ton of work on The ReidOut: understand that elections are in three pieces. There is going to be an election night result. Because most states, you know, the vote that comes in that night gets counted, precinct by precinct, we’lll hear that vote.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Some states like Florida allowed the absentee vote that was mailed in before to be counted in advance. So you’ll get that number. And then you’re gonna, later on, get the absentee and the early vote. They’re gonna come in in three chunks. So if one person is leading at 9:00 p.m., that doesn’t mean they won the election. It could be that one person wins more votes on Election Day and the other person wins more absentee votes, the other person wins more early votes. But all those votes have to get counted. So watch for the Red Mirage is what we call it, where it looks like Trump is winning on election night because his voters tend to vote on election day. But early voters tend to be more democratic, and absentee voters tend to be more democratic. And the last thing I’ll say to that is, sometimes in states like California, the absentee takes a really long time. It’s a big state. So don’t think of elections as one day. Elections are about two months, including early votes. And some physical human has to count all those votes and it takes time. Be patient, don’t panic and don’t believe the election is stolen just because the person who is ahead at 9:00 is behind at 11:00 p.m.
Errin Haines:
Yeah, I mean, keep calm and count the votes is definitely the message through election. Like there is no such thing as “Election Day” anymore. And there is no such thing really as “Election Night,” right? We are in election season, and so just let the process play out the way that it should fairly and safely until we have, you know, these accurate results that we will have, but we’ll likely not have on election night. And it is so important to reiterate that message because we see the former president already raising the specter of a rigged election. And in that kind of meantime, when the votes are being tallied beyond the night of November 5, you know, what he may say kind of in the meantime, you know, will likely not be factual, not be accurate, and will give people, you know, certainly could give people, calls to believe that there is something wrong with the process.
Errin Haines:
So we should continue to disabuse people of the notion that there’s anything wrong with the process, just because we will not immediately have results, especially in an election where we probably will expect another record turnout. Well, wanna even think about looking beyond 2024 at the future of the country. So there was this PRRI — Public Religion Research Institute — event where you said that American democracy is more like Latin American democracy. And I wanna unpack that because I thought it was really interesting. I mean, why did you say that? What did you mean by that? How fragile do you feel like American democracy is right now?
Joy-Ann Reid:
Super fragile. You know, there’s no guarantee that this experiment will survive. And the reason I say we’re more like a Latin American democracy than we are like Europe, you know, or you know, England or France or Germany, these are old countries. They’ve had multiple series of wars, but they have a history that’s very succinct. And then it also is very White and European. What Latin America is, are their e colonies. The slave colonies that the Europeans created in the quote unquote “new world.” When they caught Brazil, they made it into a slave colony. When they got Venezuela, it was a slave colony. When they got Jamaica, it was a slave colony. When they got Barbados, it was a slave colony. They’re all just big plantations. All of the Caribbean islands were big flowing plantations. You know what, America was a slave colony, it was just a big old slave colony.
Joy-Ann Reid:
The crown had huge ownership interest in the United States through its slave colonies, and that’s all this was. And so we, like Latin America, we’re their slave colony. And then we got free — at least the White people did. And so when — well, the White men did. Well, the rich White men did — and when they broke off and created their own country, what they created was very similar to what was created in Latin America. Liberated slave colonies. We are so much like them. And our history has proceeded like their history, right? You’ve had this oligarchy, which all of those countries had straight up oligarchies that are now trying to emerge into democracy in a very difficult way. And they’re having a difficult time balancing race and gender, et cetera, in the same way we are.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Venezuela just elected a Trump — Maduro — who’s doing all the Trump things. Our society is more like their societies. Our history and England’s history are not similar at all. It’s just they’re White English people here that help form the country, but that doesn’t mean we’re like them. And we also don’t have the long history to go back on and to fall back on. We’re a very young country like, like Latin American countries. And so our democracy is as unstable as theirs. We’re just super rich, so we’ve been able to keep stability through money. But what you’re seeing is us fragmenting, and we were already fragmented. We had this…Confederate states and the union states were two different countries, really, that Lincoln forced to stay together. And so we’re struggling to have one society, one culture, one set of mores, one set of values, which is so different, you know, the left and the right. And living together is hard and it’s gonna be hard ’cause there’s very little compromise between the two things we wanna do in the world and what we wanna be. So, you know, I’m not sure that this experiment can work, to be honest. Sometimes I look at it and I think, “Wow, we’re Sudan, and we’re gonna be North and South Sudan.” And sometimes I look at it and go, “Okay, we’ll figure it out.” And it just depends on the day and how much coffee I’ve had.
Errin Haines:
Definitely caffeine is a factor in evaluating democracy. No, but I mean coming, you know, this country is literally coming up on our 250th birthday. And as we do that, like, contemplating where we are as a democracy and where we are going as a democracy, the reality that we’ve only been a truly representative, multicultural, multiracial, multi-gender democracy, that was not a 1776 starting point, right? So why wouldn’t, you know, a democracy that young still be very much in progress and also very fragile and also something that each generation must be vigilant about? What feels new is that, is the idea that that is something that we might have to fight for election cycle after election cycle.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Yeah. And it’s never been done. I mean, the only other country that’s even similar to us is South Africa, but they’re 80% Black and, and like 15% White. So the reality is making a multiracial democracy is almost impossible. Most countries are fairly monoracial. We’re a very multiracial country.
And we’re the only multiracial democracy that’s gotten this far. You know, Brazil is struggling like crazy to make theirs work, but all the way they make it work is they just completely suppress 55% of the population. And also they just resist the idea of blackness at all. They just don’t address race. They just ignore it. That’s what most Latin American countries do. Um, but they’re all struggling, too. You know, we’re not the only one. And Europe is struggling to hold onto its democracies and they are mostly monoracial countries and they can barely keep the fascists from coming back, you know? So, it’s not just us.
Errin Haines:
Yeah. And all of those places really paying so much attention to what happens on November 5 for this democracy, because, for better or for worse, you know, the rest of the world does pay attention to what we do. And, you know, our politics are global and none of this is happening in isolation, right? And I guess, on that note, I wanna kind of close out our conversation by reiterating — I know this is something that we’ve talked about and I hope that you will talk about this with our audience — because the stakes of this election are personal for you. I mean, I think about, you know, hearing the former president talk about, you know, the revenge tour that he has been on, the retribution that he plans to implement, if, you know he is returned to the White House. You’ve been really outspoken, you know, and calling out the lies and the hypocrisy of the former president. But he has also been pretty outspoken in talking about prosecuting his critics and rivals, and that includes you. So, I mean, how are you thinking about the consequences of potentially another Trump presidency?
Joy-Ann Reid:
I’ve been tweeted at by Trump, and it’s not a pleasant experience. You know, what happens after that are usually a lot of threats. And his people, his base, includes, you know, some normal people, but it also includes some real nuts, you know? And so, I definitely worry about violence writ large if he comes back in or even if he loses and then decides to, you know, unleash the worst of his people. And then if he gets back in. Yeah, I definitely think about it. But I can’t dwell on it, you know, because I wouldn’t be able to do my job. So I try not to really personalize it too much. I’ve only been in the same room with Trump once, and that’s when he was in court. I don’t know the man, you know, I don’t. I don’t know his heart, as people like to say.
Joy-Ann Reid:
I just know that he is a negative nefarious force in American history. That he is a negative force in the same way that in the 1930s Charles Lindbergh was. I know that he is poisonous to our unity, to our sanity and to our ability to run a sane normal country. And I know that if he became president again, it wouldn’t just be dangerous for me. I think about the kids who would be listening to the bang at the door and having their parents dragged out or themselves and put in a camp. ‘Cause I’ve seen what the camps look like. I’ve been to one of Donald Trump’s camps for children, for migrant children, and they’re horrible. I, still, can close my eyes and visualize those little kids that I saw and I didn’t even see the ones in the cages. So I can only imagine what those were.
Joy-Ann Reid:
Like the ones Jacob Soboroff saw, the ones I saw, they faked them and put ’em on a soccer field to make ’em look happy. They were terrified. You know, I’ve talked to people who’ve counseled children who they’re trying to reunite with their moms and they don’t wanna go to their mom ’cause they think their mom abandoned them. Kids who didn’t speak any English and who had no idea what was happening and couldn’t understand. The people that… I’m not worried about me. He’s going to destroy those kids. This ain’t normal, y’all. And I think we just have to force ourselves. And as journalists, we’re not supposed to editorialize about elections. But in this one, I’m just telling y’all: read history. We are back in a 1930s moment. This is def con one for American democracy. That man will destroy this country. And if he gets back in, it’s not me I’m worried about. It’s us.
Errin Haines:
I guess, on the flip side of that, what do you think a Kamala Harris presidency would mean for this country?
Joy-Ann Reid:
Now that’s on a whole different level, right? Because you know, when Obama, you know, my kids are in their twenties. So Obama was their president that they know, right? But as a matter of fact, they used to really like Joe Biden, ‘cause they thought he was like a meme with the glasses – they just thought of him as the guy with the Ray-Bans and the representation of, you know, Black president, something that seemed so unimaginable before Barack Obama, especially his name is Barack Hussein Obama. You know, it was like, whoa. The fact that that happened, that just, I think, made young, made young Black men stand up in a way and feel a certain kind of way about themselves in a way that I think is important. And I think that Kamala Harris would do that for women writ large, but for Black women in particular, and for Asian American women, for Brown women, it would be such a statement of embrace that this country is embracing us and embracing our power and embracing the idea that we should be able to lead.
Joy-Ann Reid:
You know, just 60 years ago, women couldn’t even open up a bank account without a man. Look at, God, this woman is the Vice President of the United States 60, 70 years after women could finally open up a bank account on their own or buy stock on their own. Women couldn’t do that in the 1970s. It wasn’t till 1974. Marital rape was legal till 1991. Women have come so far, but with that asterisk — that’s on The 19th — Black women have had to come further. And so if a Black woman becomes president, it says something phenomenal about the possibilities of America. It says something phenomenal about human nature and the ability of people to grow and the ability of people to accept things that they thought were unacceptable about acceptance, about representation, about this country’s potential. So I think the two of them are polar opposites of what we can say we wanna be. And that’s what we’re gonna do on November 5. We’re gonna say what we wanna be. We either wanna be what she’s saying, which is, “Let’s embrace the whole country. Let’s try to wrap our arms around everybody, even the Trumpers. We’ll wrap our arms around the Liz Cheneys if we have to. We just wanna be together.” Or him who’s saying, “I love Hitler.” And I feel like if you’ve said that you’ve said it all and I don’t need to hear nothing else from you.
Errin Haines:
Well, Joy, you have certainly said it all in this election. I will be listening and tuning in and maybe even hanging out with you on November 5 for Decision 2024 night on MSNBC. But in the meantime, thank you so much for stopping by The Amendment and talking to me about a consequential, a historic and unprecedented election year.
Joy-Ann Reid:
My good sister, I love you and there’s not a thing you can do about it. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
Errin Haines:
Back to you, my friend.
The Amendment is a co-production of the 19th News and Wonder Media Network. Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan, Terri Rupar, Faith Smith and Emily Rudder. The show is edited by Grace Lynch and Julia B. Chan, produced by Brittany Martinez, Grace Lynch, Alyia Yates Grau and Luci Jones. And Post-production support from Julie Bogan, Lance Dixon and Wynton Wong. Artwork by Aria Goodman. And our theme music is composed by JLin.