Joy Reid Responds To Fox News Race-Baiting Take On Trump Mugshot

The mugshot of Donald Trump has animated conservative pundits, with some comparing him to late rapper Tupac Shakur. During an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton on her MSNBC show The Reid Out, Joy Reid indicated her displeasure with these takes.

As Revolt reported, Reid took exception to the idea that due to his arrest, Trump gained relatability from Black voters. Reid was responding to a segment on The Five, a Fox News segment. Host Jesse Watters claimed that Trump’s arrest amounted to a badge of honor, and contributor Raymond Arroyo stated that he heard a Black woman say Trump was “gangsta” as a result of his mug shot photo circulating.

In her conversation with Sharpton, Reid compared the arrest of figures like John Lewis with the arrest of Trump at one point, telling Sharpton, “Rev, you have been arrested protesting for rights. You have been arrested in civil rights marches. You’re a civil rights leader. You go back and think about people arrested in the 1960s. John Lewis’ mugshot is a badge of honor, but it was what he was arrested for. He was arrested in order to protest for people to vote and have civil rights.”

.@JoyAnnReid leads #TheReidOut tonight noticing that since Donald Trump came along in 2016, leading Republicans insist that because of him Republicanism is booming among Black people, despite there being no evidence of that. pic.twitter.com/7hP6FvhUW1

— The ReidOut (@thereidout) August 29, 2023

“Well, it is part of the criminalization of Blacks,” Sharpton responded. “They see all Blacks as criminals, and they feel that we all will, in a knee-jerk way, go with criminals. No, we go with those that we feel are falsely being criminalized and tried and cannot defend themselves.”

According to the Huffington Post, Trump’s campaign is already using the ex-president’s mug shot to raise money for his campaign.

Mike Nellis, the founder of Authentic, a Democrat-focused digital marketing and fundraising agency, told the outlet, “Both parties are going to use Trump’s mug shot to raise money,” Nellis explained. “It’s catnip for online donors, for both the left and the right. No doubt about it.”