Ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid goes full conspiracy theorist on Trump assassination attempt



Ex-MSNBC host Joy Reid appears to have gone off the deep end as, during a recent appearance on former MSNBC colleague Katie Phang’s Youtube channel, she questioned the veracity of the assassination attempt on President Trump.

“He’s got these magical doctors who claim that he was shot in the ear, but his ear, I guess, grew back,” Reid began. “He had a Dukal bandage on one minute, no bandage the next. We can't get a medical record from this alleged assassination. He was supposedly shot. We have nothing.”

“Where are the investigative records? One day, he slapped a maxi pad on his ear. The next day, the ear is totally fine,” Phang jumped in.

“Isn’t it odd that we’ve never asked for his medical records?” Reid said.


“You’re not allowed to even say, ‘Isn’t that weird?’” she said.

“And the mainstream media isn’t demanding his medical records. They’re not demanding anything. They’re terrified of this man,” she added.

“This is weird. This is so weird. Like, we can agree that, yeah, we don’t have enough information about Thomas Crooks or any connections he might have had with some people in the government. We need to get to the bottom of that,” says Keith Malinak, executive producer of “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“She’s hung up on, ‘I don’t think he was shot,’” he continues. “That’s what she’s hung up on.”

“That’s the big conspiracy theory on the left,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray agrees.

“These people are unhinged,” Malinak adds.

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Rabid Leftist Arrested For Threatening To Assassinate Trump And The Media Is Not All Over It

The threat of homicide is more sobering considering Trump was nearly assassinated twice last year.

Trust the FBI? Not until it tells us about Thomas Crooks



During a press conference last week in the Oval Office, a reporter asked President Trump how it’s possible that we know more about a couple from a Coldplay concert just hours after their extramarital affair was exposed on social media than we do about Thomas Crooks more than a year after he came within centimeters of killing the president in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Despite thousands of interviews and hundreds of hours combing through photos and videos, the public still knows very little about the would-be assassin. Not his motive, not how he gained access to a nearby rooftop, not even how he built two remote-detonated bombs he ultimately never used.

Until any of us are given reason to believe transparency in any particular case is harmful to the constituents we serve, our duty is to demand it at every juncture.

Trump responded that he believed the FBI when the organization told him investigators didn’t find anything, clarifying that his conversation was with the “new” FBI leadership, not the corrupt organization led by James Comey or Christopher Wray — leadership he would never trust.

Old rot, new clothes

Though Trump has placed widely trusted figures within the FBI, six months is hardly enough time to place faith in the same institution that has been weaponized against him for nearly a decade. Institutional rot undoubtedly runs deeper than its top brass.

The ambiguity surrounding Trump’s failed assassin should be met with absolute scrutiny. The lack of information about Crooks is not an anomaly — it’s the signature of a bureaucracy that hoards information from the public under the pretext of “national security” or “ongoing investigations.”

This culture of concealment has infected Washington for decades. Bureaucratic elites, along with their stakeholders, have presumed the authority to decide what the public should know — if anything — and release only information that suits their agenda.

Americans have been promised transparency and accountability across generations. They almost never get it. Such entrenched power calls into question who truly holds the keys to power in Washington.

A history of ambiguity

Consider the John F. Kennedy assassination. For more than 60 years, the public has doubted the official narrative pushed by the intelligence community — and rightly so. Just days after President Kennedy’s funeral, a Gallup poll revealed that a majority of Americans didn’t believe that the shooter acted alone. The lack of transparency that still persists decades following the case has only fueled speculation.

In one of my first hearings on the Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets, experts confirmed what President Trump’s March declassification made undeniable: The CIA repeatedly lied to Congress about its ties to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Just days ago, the agency tacitly admitted that its 1963 testimony — claiming to have had only limited knowledge of Oswald — was a lie. Newly released documents show that the CIA’s liaison to Congress, George Joannides, not only concealed an “off-the-books” anti-Castro operation that had interacted with Oswald, but he also earned the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal for stonewalling Congress’ investigation.

For nearly 62 years, a bureaucratic agency commissioned by Congress, funded by Congress, and subject to congressional oversight lied to Congress. And not only did it get away with it, it was rewarded.

CIA gone rogue

If the body that created the CIA can’t hold the agency accountable, who can?

Not even the executive branch has succeeded. Republican and Democratic presidents alike have failed to force full compliance with the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. Under Trump’s first term, the public was given the familiar excuse from the intel community: “It’s a national security concern.”

Do the American people have to wait six decades — and for all involved to be long dead — before knowing the truth about what their supposed representative government has done? Who decides when and what we get to know? If not the people, if not Congress, if not the president — then who?

RELATED: The CIA’s greatest failure: Intelligence

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

This is why the Jeffrey Epstein case matters to the public and why it can’t be swept under the rug. The “files” and our inability to even learn who was involved in the crimes that placed Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in jail are a testament to the ugly truth: In the words of James Madison, “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”

Transparency is our duty

The American people have become several steps removed from the decision-making power in Washington. Information and the means of acquiring it — and thereby, the ability to even know whom to hold accountable — have been almost entirely lost. Perhaps our government is, as Madison asserts, “a prologue to a farce or a tragedy.”

As members of Congress, it is our duty to do everything in our power to uphold the Constitution and deliver to the American people the transparency that sustains trust in our democratic Republic. Until any of us are given reason to believe transparency in any particular case is harmful to the constituents we serve, our duty is to demand it at every juncture.

Suspected would-be presidential assassin Ryan Routh will represent himself at federal trial



A day after suspected would-be presidential assassin Ryan Wesley Routh refused to meet with his court-appointed defense attorney at a federal lockup in Miami, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon approved Routh’s motion to proceed to trial as a pro se defendant representing himself.

Routh, 59, of Greensboro, N.C., faces Sept. 8 jury selection in his trial on five federal counts charging him with aiming a sniper rifle through a fence and trying to kill President Donald J. Trump on Sept. 15, 2024, at Trump’s West Palm Beach, Fla., golf resort.

‘The attorney-client relationship is irreconcilably broken.’

Routh wrote a letter to Judge Cannon, entered on the court docket July 11, complaining bitterly about his federal public defenders and stating that it’s “best I walk alone.” The judge held Faretta hearings on July 10 and July 24 before ruling in an eight-page order that Routh can proceed as his own attorney.

The judge ordered federal public defenders Kristy Militello and Renee Sihvola to serve on the case as standby counsel.

Militello filed a motion with the court to withdraw from the case after she said Routh repeatedly refused to meet with her for their scheduled July 22 consultation at the Federal Correctional Institution-Miami.

“While undersigned counsel was on the train to Miami, BOP [Bureau of Prisons] legal staff emailed to advise that Mr. Routh refused our scheduled, in-person legal visit,” Militello wrote. “Undersigned counsel continued our trip to the detention center in Miami and upon arrival asked BOP staff to inform Mr. Routh that his counsel was present, in person, and wished to meet with him.”

Six refusals

“Mr. Routh has now refused six attempts from members of our office/the defense team to meet with Mr. Routh,” Militello wrote. “As a result, undersigned counsel submits that the attorney-client relationship is irreconcilably broken. It is clear that Mr. Routh wishes to represent himself, and he is within his Constitutional rights to make such a demand.”

Judge Cannon issued a four-page order warning Routh that he will be required to follow Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, and local rules for the federal Southern District of Florida.

“A pro-se defendant bears responsibility for actively preparing the case for trial and exercising control over his defense, and must obtain any essential discovery, file all necessary pleadings and motions, and comply with all scheduling orders and Court instructions,” Judge Cannon wrote.

The judge warned that “any vexatious, obstructionist, or obstreperous behavior or other misconduct may result in an order revoking defendant’s pro-se status, along with any other sanctions the court deems appropriate.”

RELATED: Ryan Routh's former employee pleads guilty to helping arm Trump's alleged would-be assassin

The Paul G. Rogers Federal Building and United States Courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida.Photo by Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images

Federal prosecutors filed a motion in limine on July 8 expressing concern that Routh sought to “turn this trial into a circus.” The government seeks to limit how the defense can proceed in accordance with standard rules of evidence, especially Routh’s expected attempt to litigate his character before trial begins.

Prosecutors called out Routh’s “odd claim” that the government has not identified “specific pieces of evidence at issue.”

“As outlined below,” prosecutors wrote in a July 24 filing, “to the best of our ability lacking a defense exhibit list, we have done so. And our arguments are more persuasive in light of the defendant’s decision to represent himself — this court has a responsibility to ensure that trial does not become a circus and that the jury is not burdened and distracted by plainly inadmissible evidence.”

Prosecutors said the defense has “refused to inform the court of matters as simple as whether Routh was at the golf course on September 15, 2024.”

The FBI said Routh set up a sniper’s lair just outside the fence of the Trump International Golf Club and lay in wait for nearly 12 hours with a “military-grade” SKS 7.62x39-caliber rifle aimed toward the sixth green. President Trump was playing the fifth fairway on Sept. 15 when a Secret Service agent doing an advance sweep saw a rifle poking through the chain-link fence. The agent opened fire after determining that the rifle was pointed at him.

Routh fled the area at 1:31 p.m. without taking a shot at President Trump, the FBI said. He reportedly took off north in a Nissan SUV with stolen plates on Interstate 95. Routh was stopped and arrested by officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office and the Martin County Sheriff’s Office at 2:14 p.m.

Two attempts in 64 days

This attempted assassination was the second attempt on President Trump’s life in a little more than two months.

RELATED: Secret Service suspends 6 agents over Trump assassination attempt — but some argue the real story is who didn't get punished

FBI investigators comb the outside of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Sept. 16 for evidence in the second attempt on Donald J. Trump’s life in 64 days.Photo by Amy Beth Bennett/SouthFlorida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks somehow got onto a slightly pitched roof of a building overlooking the Butler County Farm Show grounds in Pennsylvania on July 13 and fired eight rifle shots at the stage of a Trump rally, striking Trump in the right ear, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore, and seriously wounding David Dutch and James Copenhaver. A Secret Service counter-sniper shot and killed Crooks.

Both cases led to a flurry of investigations that savaged the Secret Service for alleged inept communication, failure to share credible threat information, and negligence in failing to staff the Butler event with counter-surveillance teams and drones capable of shooting down potential aerial threats aimed at the president.

The Secret Service was also pilloried for failure to adequately screen the Trump golf club in West Palm Beach, such as patrolling the perimeter with agents or overhead drones. The Secret Service failures at the time led to calls for then-candidate Trump to replace his Secret Service detail with private armed security.

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