No good deed goes unpunished and, as if to prove that, MSNBC host Joy Reid and political analyst Juanita Tolliver claimed during Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Reid Out” that Governor Ron DeSantis is racist for a comment he made when trying to compliment the athleticism and hard work of basketball players.
As background, DeSantis was speaking about sports and the differences between them. He highlighted the difference between baseball, which he said anyone could play with a bit of hard work, and basketball, which requires “incredible athletes” who, because of their superhuman athleticism, are “just freaks of nature.
Speaking about baseball, he said, “There’s so many places that you need to have on a baseball team and there are different skills that are required—so some people can be a pitcher, some people can be a middle in-fielder, some people can be a catcher. And so I think that there’s kind of a place for everybody in a baseball team if you’re willing to work hard, if you’re willing to practice.” He then added that, while baseball is a “very democratic” and “very meritocratic” game, basked is played and won by those who are “just freaks of nature” because they are “just incredible athletes.” Watch that below:
Ron DeSantis said basketball athletes are “freaks of nature” while contrasting the sport with baseball which he described as a “meritocratic game” with “different skills that are required” to be on the team. pic.twitter.com/APnbsfAOBU
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) June 21, 2023
Predictably, Reid and Tolliver were furious about that remark. After listening to the clip, Reid, no friend of DeSanits immediately exclaimed, “Ugh!” Tolliver then joined in the DeSantis bashing and echoed Kamala Harris’ smears about the Florida history curriculum, saying, “OH!!! It’s no wonder! It’s no wonder that he makes stupid statements around slavery being beneficial for enslaved people when that’s what he thinks about basketball players, which we know is code for Black people. Right? Like that it just oozes through his pores. The racism and the White Supremacy. Like how? How how how has this man been able to advance so far? And I have another question. What will it take to stop him? Thankfully, he’s getting his own way in that regard. Thankfully, he’s running his own campaign into the ground.”
Reid agreed with Tolliver and joined in the DeSantis bashing, saying, “He’s stopping himself. I mean, we found out, at first they thought this insane sort of homoerotic, but also homophobic ad. You know, people were like, Oh, I wonder what PAC made that? It turned out it was his campaign! He made they made the ad for him. And now what you’re seeing is this exodus because, you know, running for governor, running for president, when you’re a governor, you’re supposed to use your the state of your state as sort of the you know, this is the tried and true. This is what I can do. Not only all the problems I mentioned earlier, you have conventions now leaving. The Game of Thrones convention is like peace out. We’re not doing it in Florida. You’ve got all these other conventions. National Association of Black Society of Engineers was like, Nope, we’re not doing our convention, we’re going to go to Atlanta now. Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and corporate has said, peace, we’re not coming to Orlando. We ain’t coming because of him. How does he run for president when he’s running conventions out of his state?”
Tolliver then said, “I mean, it also tracks with the NAACP releasing a full travel warning for Black and brown people because the state is so harmful.”
They weren’t the only ones to attack DeSantis for trying to be complimentary. University of Cincinnati Sport Administration Professor Wayne Black, for example, tweeted out, “This is racism. For those who want me to soften it up, this is very clearly coded racial bias. I’m not shocked given who it’s coming from. this is a mindset that a lot of coaches subconsciously reinforce on their teams w/o recognizing it.“
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