Joy Reid calls Tucker Carlson ‘segregationist housewife from the 1950s’ after his repeated on-air attacks

Fox News host has referred to MSNBC host as ‘race lady’ multiple times during his show

MSNBC host Joy Reid has called Tucker Carlson “some segregationist housewife from the 1950s,” after the Fox News host repeatedly referred to her as the “race lady” during his show.

“The race lady. Why would he call me that? I mean, I used to run track in high school but, I mean honestly, I'm not that fast,” she said on Monday. “Oh, honey, Tuckems, is this really about me fixating on race, or is it about you fixating on race?”

Mr Carlson mocked Ms Reid after she said she still wears a mask despite being fully vaccinated.

“Well, Joy-Ann Reid, the race lady over at MSNBC, took a quick break from haranguing whitey yesterday to reveal something deeply personal about herself on television,” he said.

Responding to Mr Carlson, Ms Reid said: “I mean when you recently went off on me for continuing to mask up post-vaccine while jogging in crowded Central Park, you weirdly, as you did in that montage, threw in my attending Harvard.”

She said it felt like a “dog whistle”. “Did you want to go to Harvard? Did they reject you, and you think, ‘Oh yeah, they let the race lady in, affirmative action’,” she said.

Ms Reid went on to say that she got into Harvard because she had a really high GPA and fantastic SAT scores, and “that's how affirmative action works.”

Bringing up the recent controversy about Mr Carlson’s yearbook entry, she said: “You had fun at Trinity after, you know, you got bought in, right? By the way, what was the Dan White society? You know what? Moving on.”

Mr Carlson had come under fire for his entry in a Trinity College yearbook in which he appears to make a joke about the murder of Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay elected politician. 

Under Mr Carlson’s photo in the yearbook, it lists that he is a member of the “Dan White Society” and Jesse Helms Foundation. Dan White killed Mr Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone in 1978.

Ms Reid also noted that Mr Carlson’s career at MSNBC and CNN did not work out.

Coming back to race, she said she is not the one “who spools out over my neighbourhood changing like I'm some segregationist housewife from the 1950s. That would be you, Tuckems.”

Ms Reid said she continues to mask up in crowded spaces because “I don’t know how many people in those crowds that I'm jogging around didn’t hear about the court case where your bosses said that your show isn’t news, so they listen to you like you are the news.”

She said she does not believe people who listen to Mr Carlson are taking precautions against Covid-19.

The Tucker Carlson Tonight host was widely criticised last week after going on an anti-mask rant and calling people who wear masks “zealots and neurotics.”

“People like you, and your friends at the BS factory are keeping us steeped in covid sickness, and rage, and paranoia, and the ways in which you, little Tucker, are making America worse, are why I will continue to keep my mask on in a crowd,” Ms Reid said.