Caution: This story contains descriptions that some might find offensive
In a heated one-on-one interview, MSNBC host Joy Reid welcomed Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice to her show for a stern lecture about the First Amendment and a gotcha quiz about an author’s name and context.
If that was the plan, it didn’t go so well.
“I want to be clear: no one is banning books. Write the book. Print the book. Public the book. Put the book in the public library. Sell the book,” Justice said at one point. “We’re talking about a public school library.”
Justice, who appeared to keep Reid on defense during the interview, went on to point out public schools also block explicit websites on school-owned computers. So it feels “hypocritical,” she said, that the same people who are accusing Moms of banning books aren’t demanding school students have unfettered access to the Internet at school, too.
Media analyst Tim Graham, of the Media Research Center, tells AFN he watched the Reid vs. Justice exchange and wasn’t surprised Reid came out the loser.
"Routinely, we find that Joy Reid loses when she has these conservatives she has on,” he says. “I think that's certainly the case here with Tiffany Justice.”
The reason Justice won and Reid lost, Graham says, is Justice was able to push back on the “book ban” claim made by Reid and many others. Justice did so, he says, by challenging the MSNBC host to defend why children in middle school should have access to sexually graphic books in their school library.
In fact, Justice happily pointed out more than once the host was repeatedly failing to answer that key question.
If the MSNBC interview was a boxing match, Reid attempted to go on offense with a one-two punch of lecturing and insulting her despised conservative guest. The show host attempted to throw Justice off by asking her the name of the “Boys Aren’t Blue” author, which Justice could not recall. Reid then lectured her guest over the context of the book, a first-hand account of a traumatic and terrible childhood.
Then came the below-the-belt insult. Justice lacked the “expertise” to critique the book, Reid said, and instead was cherry-picking explicit words from it to shock public school boards.
Justice, however, smiled at the lecture and the insults, then punched back.
“In what context,” Justice demanded, “is a strap-on dildo acceptable for public school? That is my question to you.”
Reid never recovered from that counter-punch, however. She tried the I’m-conducting-the-interview-here tactic, then tried to insult her guest a second time. Justice kept smiling and pointed out the lecturing show host had not answered her question.
Regarding that explicit one-liner, Graham says Justice hit the MSNBC host with a well-aimed punch.
"How can you fight Joy's claim that your opposition is out of context unless you provide them with the context?” he says. “You provide them with these explicit passages and say is this something you want your 13-year-old to come across.”
