Watch the ReidOut with Joy Reid Highlights: March 26

our chairman of the of the NBC Universal News Group C Arande uh who we both know very well um he sent a memo that we all got as employees here uh resending the hiring of R Romney McDaniel and I know I felt very strongly about it I know you felt very strongly about it I think everyone from four o'clock on from Nicole all the way to midnight we all felt very strongly and said so on our respective shows uh yesterday and I I just have to say when somebody does the right thing I feel like it should b

e acknowledged as publicly as we acknowledged our outrage and so I I know how I feel about it I am grateful to Caesar for actually making the right decision I think it was the right decision but I want to get your take as well oh well thank you for asking me about it I I still feel like I still I still feel like a little it it always feels wrong to talk about things you know in the company as if it's news and I you know it's just this it's not the way either you or I are wired I know but I I wil

l just say that journalists are a fractious bunch and in our big company with all sorts of different journalistic entities you have all sorts of different people working in this business doing all sorts of different kinds of work and to see the essentially unanimous feeling among all the journalists in this building and all the sort of senior staff and all the producers and everybody in this building about this was one thing but then to see the executives and the leadership hear that and respond

to it and be willing to change course based on it based on their respect for us and hearing what we argued I I have deep respect for that I do I I mean what I said on the air last night on my show that I think that acknowledging that you might have gotten something wrong is a real sign of strength a real show of strength and I think it's a show of strength and I think it's a show of respect for the people who work at this company and who make us who we are um that leadership was willing to chan

ge on this and I'm I'm grateful to them you know it's not about hiring a republican it's not even about hiring somebody who has Trump ties this was a really specific case because of Miss McDaniel's and her involvement in the election interference stuff and um I'm I'm grateful that our our lead ership was willing to do the I think this the Bold strong resilient thing yeah I mean we're going to be using her name because she's a witness in the Michigan elector Su case mean it's like it's less awkwa

rd to have to say and by the way this person works for NBC news right we're glad we don't have to do that uh Rachel M it's always a pleasure uh my friend thank you very much I now release you to your evening thank you Joy thank you very much I appreciate it okay and because we cannot get enough Rachel of course um there is more there is more Rachel mat on Saturday April 6th Rachel and I will be at the legendary Apollo Theater in hem for a conversation about my book Medgar and merly the love stor

y that awakened America it's going to be exciting I cannot wait go to msnbc.com Medgar and merly for tickets all right good evening everyone we begin tonight with the enduring endlessly controversial and ugly political debate over abortion now from the old and days when I grew up in the 1980s this is how abortion was experienced by women in much of the United States a woman accused of setting fires at three abortion clinics is under arrest tonight in New Jersey real feminist don't baby there wer

e similar demonstrations in other parts of the country in Albany and Syracuse New York 150 arrests in Philadelphia the demonstrators went limp and police carted them off on stretchers 40 demonstrators in Dayton Ohio were charged with trespassing disorderly conduct and resisting arrest a nationwide reign of terror against abortion providers kicked off women forced to enter abortion clinics behind barricades and a police presence under a huddle of escorts Guerilla Warfare tactics were particularly

used against these clinics and those that worked in them were also the target targets of extreme violence including arson bombings murders and acid attacks this was life in the 1980s in America seeing anti-abortion terrorists bombing and torching Clinics throughout the country here you're seeing the destruction of a clinic in Pensacola Florida using pipe bombs it was one of three clinics bombed by four people early Christmas morning in 1984 this Pensacola multi arson attack wasn't unique for th

e area in fact Pensacola Florida became a hot bed of anti-abortion Hysteria in that decade the hysteria only worsened and got more organized when conservative groups like operation rescue made going to an abortion clinic as a patient or working at one particularly dangerous here you see operation rescue protesters in Minneapolis where 153 people were arrested and carted out of a building where they blocked a hallway leading to an abortion clinic inside according to slate operation rescue would o

rganize abortion clinic hits as Clinic Defenders called them in which hundreds of members would mob a single abortion clinic over the course of the 1980s the US lost nearly 20% of abortion providers the Slate article reports the observations of longtime women's Choice Clinic director Lindy Comey who said the attacks were spearheaded by quote very angry men Comey added quote this was a fight about male superiority and the worst of the right-wing came out to join that struggle not only were they w

omen haters but they were queer haters it was a Christian militia the 1990s and 2000s weren't much better with the first abortion doctor killed others would follow including one Doctor Who was killed as he stood in the foyer of his church Dr David Gunn was shot after getting out of his car as he came to work at a Pensacola abortion clinic a dozen anti-abortion protesters from an Assembly of God Church were outside one of them was armed when Dr gun arrived a guy uh took after the doctor and shot

him point blank in the back and then he surrendered at the cops Dr John be Britain and the men accompanying him they were shot to death outside a Pensacola Florida abortion clinic the escort's wife was also wounded in the hail of shotgun blasts Dr George tiller was killed in his church it was a violent and cruel era women and abortion clinic workers basically lived through three decades of terrorism around abortion but something else had also happened in the 1980s in France where a new drug mist

one commonly called ru486 was developed to be taken for medication abortion care the arrival of a drug that would allow women to skip the miserable and even terrifying process of facing down anti-abortion Zealot at Clinic was a GameChanger the drug was approved for use in France in 1988 but American women had to wait much longer there is a pill made in France that induces abortion but it is not sold in the United States and may never be the reason anti-abortion groups which promise an economic w

ar against any firm which even tries to bring in ru486 you are going to see literally millions of people across the United States rise in Outrage over this that company will be boycotted but ru486 continued to be used in parts of Europe and China and by the year 2000 American women finally got access to the drug today more than 60% of abortions in the US are done using nifa prisone medication medication abortion literally saved women from harassment and from terrorism and from needing police esc

orts to literally lift them over anti-abortion protesters blocking the entrances of clinics like this woman in 1988 but the religious farri right has not given up their fight to close off this and every other Avenue to women's bodily autonomy First Step was overturning roie Wade check Samuel Alo took care of that the vociferous opponent of reproductive Freedom who slow burning hostility to constitutional abortion rights burned bright after finally overturning row so much so that he literally glo

ated and joked about unleashing women's suffering during his look what I did World Tour now next to farri right judge in Texas took up the Baton that would be Judge James ho of the US fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who served on the three judge panel last summer that ruled to restrict access to biffa prone and here's something interesting about Judge about interesting and clearance thomasy I should say about him per the guardian his wife Allison is a Powerhouse Federal appellate lawyer who has a

rgued in front of the Supreme Court and has deep connections to the conservative legal movement that has led to the attack on the right to abortion in the US judge ho also once clerked for drum roll Clarence Thomas I know I know we live in the worst simulation ever which brings us back to the conservative majority Supreme Court which held oral arguments today on whether to overturn the fda's approval of Mya prone more than 20 years ago today's arguments came down to three questions question numb

er one how in the world do these people have standing rolling back FDA changes would unnecessarily restrict access to myth aistone with no safety justification some women could be forced to undergo more invasive surgical abortions others might not be able to access the drug at all and all of this would happen at the request of plaintiffs who have no certain injury of their own number two how is this small group of doctors able to make a decision not just for their own patients but for every wome

n in America they're saying because we object to having to be forced to participate in this procedure we're seeking an order preventing anyone from having access to these drugs at all and I guess I'm just trying to understand how they could possibly be entitled to that given the injury that they have alleged there's a profound mismatch here between the claimed injury and the remedy they were seeking and number three should some doctors individual religious objection to abortion be allowed to ove

rride Decades of the fda's scientific ific judgment over the safety of this medication respondents don't identify any evidence that the agency overlooked they just disagree with the agency's analysis of the data before it but that doesn't provide a license to authorize judicial second guessing of the agency's expert judgments joining me now is my dear friend and colleague Rachel mat the host as you know of the Rachel matto show uh Rachel it is always good to see you and that was my take you know

I am an 80s I'm an 80s baby so I or not 0s baby but you know I was young in the 80s and and so I just remember the abortion debate as like terrorism and now this being freedom for a lot of women that was my take what is yours on what we saw today yeah Joy I think that was a really important and sobering um setup actually some of those images that you showed are images that I've never seen before that image of that woman the woman being lifted over the line of abortion protesters by police I mea

n I've never seen that image before that was incredible but I mean the there's there's the technical arguments here and there's you know the FDA drug approval process not just for this drug but for every drug which this ruling um at the at the district court level in Texas and the fifth circuit would put at risk it wouldn't just potentially if they got their way it wouldn't just potentially challenge the approval of mtha pristo it would challenge the approval of thousands of drugs so there's the

sort of technical side of this but then there's what you point out which is the real lived experience of American women who need abortion care who need to get abortions and having the option of getting a medication abortion it's not appropriate for everybody and in every circumstance but it is for a lot of abortions actually now for a majority of abortions and what they're trying to do is take it away not just in the states where they've already banned abortion they're trying to take it away Na

tionwide they want a nationwide ban this means you know California Illinois New York Massachusetts everywhere and the the science and the reasoning in these Lower Court arguments that they're considering is so out there and so beyond the pale it is a little bit frightening it is a little bit sort of shaking me up a bit that the Supreme Court is even hearing this at all yeah yesterday federal agents executed search warrants at two properties in Los Angeles and Miami belonging to rap Mogul sha Did

dy comes a source familiar with the matter told NBC news that coms is the subject of a federal investigation following a wave of lawsuits that have been filed against him those lawsuits including from his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura alleged physical and sexual abuse which Colmes has denied the source also confirmed that three women and a man have been interviewed by federal officials in Manhattan in relation to allegations of sex trafficking sexual assault and the solicitation and distribut

ion of illegal narcotics and Firearms late today coles's lawyer issued the following statement quote yesterday there was a gross overuse of military level Force as search warrants were executed at Mr com's residences there is no excuse for the excessive show of force and hostility exhibited by authorities or the way his children and employees were treated Mr Colmes was never detained but spoke to and cooperated with authorities despite media speculation neither Mr Colmes nor any of his family me

mbers have been arrested nor has their ability to travel been restricted in any way this this unprecedented Ambush paired with an advanced coordinated media presence leads to a premature rush to Judgment of Mr combms and is nothing more than a Witch Hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits there's been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations Mr Colmes is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name unquote joining me now

miss Tay host of Masters of the game the new season premieres Friday on the Grio uh what is going on because we did also see uh Diddy's Sons arrested they were detained they weren't arrested they were just detained but what is going on well it it seems that there are several people who are saying things about Co combes to the government and they are trying to figure out what's going on I found it interesting that they had enough to get a search warrant right for multiple places but not enough y

et to arrest him so we're in the investigation phase and clearly they don't care we let him know what that we know what's going on yeah but it seems part of part of this whole life his whole journey has been this sort of scorched Earth campaign where you see him continuing to succeed or do big things and leave people in his wake hurt we go back to ccny which he a party that he over promoted that people ended up getting killed you think about the many artists who either left you know in complaint

or went to the church or you know died after you know I mean there was a lot of dis a lot of disheartened artists who left him that he raised up on and on um and now this this large growing number of people who are alleging crazy stuff about him and these are things that people in the industry have been hearing about it's giving R Kelly to it's giving it's it's it's it's disturbing you know I was personally Disturbed many years ago okay I I I know this man well enough to call him and say hey I

need a favor yeah and this might have been 10 12 years ago that I called him and say I have a family member who I want you to hire them as an intern and uh I have never talked about this publicly and I and he said yes and they were flying around one of the interns Atlanta Miami whatever on the jet in the house whatever and then the internship stopped abruptly like three or four months into it yeah and I spoke to my family member like what happened and they wouldn't say yeah and I'm like what wha

t why did it end he wouldn't say and years later they finally came out and this a mail and said that uh puff had said come home stay the night with me or the internship is over and they said absolutely not he said absolutely not and the internship ended uh but from there I was like oh like this is this is how it goes okay okay so to hear that things went even further with potentially allegedly many other people yeah it it's it's not I don't you know we we feel like we've seen this come well ther

e was the situation with obviously Russell Simmons who does not live in the United States any further you've got you've had these situations obviously with R Kelly this feels like it is going down that kind of a track because you have multiple accusers with nothing proofed he's not been adjudicated a you know whatever but talking videos and he paid Cassie a lot of money a a lot of money and you know the people are coming with videos though I mean like evidence not just hearsay so I mean this is

a very very frightening situation there was a period in the record business when a lot of wildness was going on of this sort and here's another shoe dropping yeah and and the thing is I think talk about where he's ends because what he's saying sounds very trumpy yeah talking about a Witch Hunt uh I had somebody text me earlier today I think I texted you today and forwarded it to you that somebody's saying watch for him to try to weaponize sort of a trump sort of narrative or watch the Trump peop

le try to weaponize what's happening in favor of trump to say look there's this persecuted black man like me that who's like me and try to weaponize it that feels very trumpish I hate to say that anyone is like Trump but there is something in the rise the long-term rise of puff and that he seemed to create his own reality to demand that everyone around him follow what he wanted and people did he had a ton of money behind him to start bad boy at a very young age and would just treat me I mean he'

s called me up and screamed at me on more than one occasion and lots of people would say that so the ego was gigantic the ability to create the reality that he wanted seemed to be there but also to create a reality that was dangerous I mean I think for a lot of hip-hop fans the the the the failure to protect Notorious BIG the fail you know the sort of egging on of an East Coast West Coast rivalry between friends that were people who knew and respected each other and didn't have to be beefing and

to sort of let that violence come you know I think for a lot of us and that and also oversampling and making hip-hop into a sample machine don't make don't get me started now you're doing that now I'm doing that but I'm only doing that because you're my friend and you'll defend me no no don't get me started how does this go is he in the United States do we know for I don't know I can't even I can't even call it I don't I don't know well you have to come back when you get more information to tha

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