Joy Reid has gone viral on TikTok, but not because she is attempting a popular challenge or lip-syncing someone else’s voice. After taking to the social media app to discuss the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and her commentary exploding on the internet, the MSNBC host found a way to connect with her audience.
However, many were outraged, while others thought it was funny.
In the video, “The ReidOut” host made a comparison to the 18-year-old’s testimony last week and now U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 Senate confirmation hearing. Both men started to cry when asked about things that they did that could possibly negatively impact their lives.
She said in the video that has surpassed 1 million views on Twitter, “This Kyle Rittenhouse trial. It reminded a lot of people of something… I can’t remember what it was.”
After pausing for a quick second, she continued, “Oh, the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, in which Brett Kavanaugh who had been accused by a high school friend of committing sexual abuse of her, cried his way through the hearings to make him a permanent member and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.”
According to Reid and many other outspoken social critics, Rittenhouse and Kavanaugh have strategically used their tears to gain sympathy from the public (or whoever is determining their fate).
They are not the first to bring attention to the concept of the persuasion of “white tears.”
NPR’s Leah Donnella wrote about the complicated nature of “white tears” in 2018 a few months after those tears welled up in Kavanaugh’s eyes before the Senate.
She wrote, “The phrase has been used to gently tease white people who get upset at things they think threaten their white privilege.”
These sentiments is exactly what Reid suggested in her video. When addressing Kavanaugh’s meltdowns she said, “His tears turned out to be more powerful than the tears of Christine Blasey Ford, which were the tears of an alleged victim.”
(Ford’s Sept. 27, 2018, testimony during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing as she laid out her accusations that he’d assaulted her at a party when they were both teenagers was far more controlled than that of his rebuttal the following day.)
She continued, “In America, there’s a thing about both white vigilantism and white tears, particularly male white tears. Really white tears in general, because that’s what Karens are, right? They Karen out and then as soon as they get caught it’s extreme waterworks.”
“White men can get away with that, too. And it has the same effect,” the Harvard graduate explains in the 1:25 minute video. “Even as the right tries to politicize the idea that masculinity is being robbed from American men by multiculturalism and wokeism. They still want to be able to have their tears.”
Reid’s juxtaposition of Kavanaugh comes after cherub-faced Kyle Rittenhouse cried on the stand during his first-degree reckless homicide trial for the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the attempted first-degree intentional homicide for injuring Gaige Grosskreutz.
One of her critics was Fox News Jimmy Failla, who weighed in on Reid’s “Male, White Tears” video. He called her a “shameless race-baiting buffoon.”
Over the last three days, conservatives have managed to generate buzz around the idea that Joy Reid is racist with several tweets using a combination of the words.
Author and proud Trump supporter called for Rittenhouse to sue Reid for “every penny she’s worth.”
Black conservatives jumped into the fray too. Conservative speaker and author Melissa Tate blamed the left for “engineering a society where it’s ok to openly spew vile racism towards whites.”
Ms. Reid has not responded to the backlash.
More news from our partners:
Black Tech Founder Details Journey from Extreme Poverty to Closing $1.6 Million Funding for App
