Joy Reid’s return to the media spotlight this week came with all the subtlety of a fire alarm in a library—and about the same level of decorum. Appearing on a YouTube livestream hosted by former MSNBC colleague Katie Phang, Reid questioned whether the 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump was, in her words, even “real.”
Let that sink in.
According to Reid, the American public knows “nothing” about the attempt on the life of a presidential nominee. Her grievances range from the absence of a full medical report, to the state of Trump’s ear, to the bizarre observation that he wasn’t more visibly injured.
“He’s got these magical doctors,” Reid sneered, mocking the post-operative medical care Trump received after being shot in the upper ear by a high-powered rifle in Butler, Pennsylvania. “His ear, I guess, grew back.”
Reid, and by extension Phang, aren’t merely skeptical—they’re dabbling in conspiratorial rhetoric under the guise of media criticism. At one point, Phang quipped that Trump appeared to be wearing a “Maxi Pad” on his wound, a comment that would have ended the career of any cable host had it been directed at a Democrat. Reid laughed.
The question, of course, isn’t whether public officials should be scrutinized—Trump included. The question is whether we're going to pretend that being wounded in a real, confirmed, on-camera assassination attempt is up for reinterpretation by talking heads who can't let go of a seven-year-old grudge.
The incident in question, for those who haven’t memory-holed it, resulted in one spectator dead, two others seriously injured, and Donald Trump narrowly surviving what the Secret Service and FBI both confirmed was an attempted political assassination. The shooter, identified as Thomas Crooks, was killed by Secret Service snipers moments after opening fire. This wasn’t hearsay. It wasn’t off-camera. It unfolded on live broadcast feeds and cell phones across the internet.
So what exactly is Reid’s theory? That the gunman—positioned on a roof within range of Secret Service and local law enforcement—was part of a staged spectacle? That a real bullet that grazed Trump’s head was fake? That the bandages, the blood, the chaos, and the casualty weren’t enough evidence for the media to take the event seriously?
What makes this line of attack particularly galling is the subtext: had this happened to any other president, especially a Democrat, the press would still be holding candlelight vigils and op-ed symposiums. Instead, the media class, represented by figures like Reid and Phang, treats a failed presidential assassination attempt as either comedic material or just another subplot in the Trump Derangement Universe.