Joy Reid offered some laughter at the expense of both Fox host Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck when the Fox host provided a platform Thursday for to spew his hatred for former president Barack Obama. The commentator and conspiracy theorist shared with Carlson that he’s recanting his apology for calling Obama a racist in 2009.
“I, like most Americans had forgotten about Glenn Beck. That’s normal. He’s easily forgettable,” Reid said last week during “the absolute worst” segment on “The Reid Out” in response to Beck’s appearance.
“Unfortunately, like most of the garbage was spit out from that network back was tossed into the great dust heap called history. But alas, Tuckums, a totally plausible understudy for Ricky Schroder in ‘Silver Spoons,’ decided to reach into that heap and drag Glenn Beck back into our lives.”
Beck appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on June 9, and spoke critically of Obama, going as far as recanting his apology for calling the former president a racist, adding, “I as exactly right!”
“This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture… This guy is, I believe, a racist,” Beck said during a segment of “Fox & Friends” in 2009.
He expressed regret over the comments several times, including in 2016 when he told The New Yorker, “Obama made me a better man…There are things unique to the African American experience that I cannot relate to. I had to listen to them.”
But amid Obama’s criticism of Republicans who have failed to sufficiently condemn racism following the incident in Charlottesville and other racially-charged conflicts that preceded the Jan. 6 riot even as they have pushed back against critical race theory teachings, believing “that was the threat to our republic,” Beck took his apology back.
“I take my apology back,” Beck said on Wednesday. “I was exactly right. And I even stated it right. You are a racist if you believe in critical race theory. … If you think that critical race theory, which teaches children that whiteness is this incurable kind of disease, that you will never be able to not be racist, that some how or another you have to be punished for the sins of the past, I know that goes to your belief in critical race theory Barack Obama, but I don’t believe in that.”
Beck also tried to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote about judging others by the content of content of their character against Obama, claiming his support of critical race theory proves he’s at odds with the civil rights icon.
But Reid dismissed Beck and his comments on Thursday. “President Obama rightfully noted that the Republican party is focused on the wrong issue. Where is the lie?” Although viewers might have suspected Reid would name Tucker “the absolute worst,” she speculated, she instead attributed the title to Beck.
“Nope! Not today. The aforementioned Garbage Pail Kid Glenn Beck went even further,” she said before a clip of Beck recanting his apology played.
Reid also referenced a statement made by Bernice King on Twitter earlier this month, in which she requested that people stop using her father’s “content of their character” quote out of context. The quote “lies within a full speech,” she said as a reminder.
