Joy Reid drew attention this week after mocking RNC chair Lara Trump’s warning that antisemitism within the United States is becoming increasingly dangerous.
Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, made the remarks Thursday during an appearance on Fox News, where she likened the current atmosphere and growing anti-Jewish sentiment to conditions associated with Nazi Germany.
“You talk to Jewish New Yorkers — they’re terrified to walk down the street,” Lara, 43, said, while calling out the 103 House Democrats who voted unsuccessfully to cut off U.S. aid to Israel and urging them to take the threat seriously.
Reid, 57, introduced the topic by recasting the Republican National Committee chair’s comments as a claim about the “return of Nazism.”
“You’re saying unless we allow Israel to kill at will as many men, women, and children as they want… then Jewish people in New York City, in the US, are afraid to walk the streets because it’s Nazism?” Reid said, laughing as she responded.
“I do not understand how that works — that does not make sense to me. I can assure you, I am here in Harlem right now, Jewish people are perfectly safe walking the streets of the United States,” she added.
Moments later, however, the former MSNBC host appeared to undercut her own point.
“But [Benjamin] Netanyahu has made folks a lot less safe, because people keep attaching all Jewish people to his genocidal policies,” Reid said.
Former MSNBC anchor Joy Reid contradicted herself within seconds after insisting all Jewish Americans have nothing to fear as rates of antisemitism remain on the rise
Protesters are seen gathered outside Palestine-supporting New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan last May to claim the politician was failing to protect Jewish New Yorkers amid a rash of hate crimes
Reid added that ‘that is the problem,’ putting particular emphasis on the word ‘that.’
‘It’s that he’s creating a world in which people blame ordinary, regular, nice Jewish people that didn’t do anything for everything Israel does,’ she said.
The clip ended there, weeks after protesters convened near New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan last May to claim the politician, a proud Palestine supporter, had failed to protect Jewish New Yorkers.
Another procession carried conflicting signs that argued Israel criticism was not the same as antisemitism – the point Reid appeared to be clumsily trying to make.
In the weeks before, several suspects spray-painted swastikas and ‘Hitler’ on multiple homes and synagogues in Forest Hills.
During the dueling protests, the Director of Programming and Strategy at #EndJewHatred, Michelle Ahdoot, told CBS New York that the group’s ultimate goal is to oust Mayor Mamdani from office.
The mayor recently told The New York Times he was in talks with the city’s legal department about potentially arresting Netanyahu for war crimes if he sets foot in the five boroughs in September for the UN General Assembly.
He admitted in a video statement Tuesday that his team has discerned city officials do not have the ‘independent legal authority’ to arrest the leader, despite a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Suspects spray-painted swastikas and ‘Hitler’ on multiple homes and synagogues in Queens in weeks before
Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, appeared on Fox News last week to call attention to the purported crisis, after 103 House Democrats voted to end US aid to Israel
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recently found in an annual audit that in 2025, nearly 6300 antisemitic incidents were reported nationwide. One-thousand one-hundred and sixty of the reports originated from New York, according to the group.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza has been raging since October 7, 2023.
The US and Israel have also repeatedly struck Iran since February 28. Both countries have warned the country is close to securing a nuclear weapon.
Reid, meanwhile, previously rankled brass at MSNBC before her firing in February 2025, via a steady stream of social media posts that often referenced Israel, sources previously told The Daily Mail.
An exec from the network said at the time that Reid’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war was problematic. They cited ‘intense’ conference calls Reid had with her staff that left the impression that she had sympathy for the impact of the war on the Gazan people but little for Israelis.
An insider similarly told Politico that her controversial social media posts – including shaming Latino Republicans for voting for Trump and claiming the media’s preoccupation with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was motivated by the victims being ‘white’ and ‘Christian’ – ‘gave the [network’s] Standards Department heartburn’ at the time,
Reid’s ratings, by that point, were down from a high of 3 million viewers per episode in her first year on the air in 2020 to a low of 1.1 million.
She has since started a Substack and show on her YouTube channel – joining figures like Jim Acosta and Don Lemon.
