Joy Reid says 'wealthy white Christian' Americans are willing to enact apartheid to 'maintain power'

MSNBC commentator Joy Reid told a group of educators Tuesday that "wealthy white Christian" Americans have shown they are willing to deploy apartheid tactics in order to "maintain power forever."

What are the details?

"No country is an eternal democracy. Democracy is extremely fragile, and multiracial democracy is so fragile, we're practically the only one that's pulled it off," Reid says in a video clip of her remarks. "This is a very difficult thing to maintain. And when you have a very determined minority, in this case wealthy white men and wealthy, white Christian men and Christian Americans who are of the fundamentalist variety, who are very clear that no matter what happens, if they have to pull the South Africa model to maintain power forever, they will do it."

"And they're not afraid of it, and they're increasingly open about it," Reid continued. "And Donald Trump is merely the avatar for this. He didn't create it, he simply benefited from it."

Reid went on to say, "I think the sooner that the majority, the actual numerical majority in this country figures that out and stop treating these elections as just foregone conclusion that you can fix it with just a simple election and that it will be free and fair, the sooner that we will wake up and actually have majority rule in this country."

According to The Washington Examiner, Reid made the claims while speaking during a panel on "Civic Participation in an age of Democratic Peril" at an event for the American Federation of Teachers union.

Anything else?

Fox News reported that Reid also used the word "apartheid" to attack Republicans just a few months ago, and pointed to a tweet where the MSNBC host used the term. Reid was reacting to a Democratic politician's report on the treatment of a U.S. citizen who was detained by ICE after agents suspected he was an illegal immigrant.

This is apartheid. https://t.co/7Yk7LMXBMV

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) July 25, 2019