Joy Reid Compares Trump to Andrew Johnson, Says The Political Parties 'Reversed'

Ryan Foley | December 2, 2019
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During the final segment of Saturday's edition of AM Joy, host Joy Reid interviewed Brenda Wineapple, author of the book The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation. Reid prefaced the interview by comparing President Trump to the notoriously racist President Johnson and reinforced that point by quoting from a New York Times article called "Donald Trump, Meet Your Precursor." Reid read aloud from the piece, seeming to agree with every word of it: "both men made an undisguised championship of white supremacy - the lodestar of their presidencies - and played on the politics of racial division." When Wineapple pointed out that Johnson "called the press the enemy of the people, he denied the legitimacy of Congress, he obstructed justice, he abused his power," Reid quipped "other than hosting a reality show, it sounds like the same guy." Wineapple continued to compare Trump to Johnson by saying Johnson "did have rallies." As the interview came to a close, Reid begged Wineapple to repeat another myth: "whenever I have a historian on, I like the historian to remind the country, these two parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, were exactly reversed...at that time." Reid described the Civil War-era Democrats as "the conservative party" and restated her thesis that "they were reversed."

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