Joy Reid admits she was vaccine 'hesitant' under Trump because former president was 'controlling,' 'manipulating' CDC and FDA

It's a good week to be Joy Reid.

Sitting upon her posh MSNBC pedestal, the host of "The Reid Out" took COVID-19 potshots at rapper Nicki Minaj one day and the entire Republican Party on another — and as a result Reid's name has been all over social media.

It's commentary and part of what she does and completely fair game — but when unsubstantiated stuff is baked into her rapid-fire delivery, it needs to be noted at the very least.

Such as Reid's wild rant saying Republicans "love COVID so much" they "want it to spread into schools, at the office, in the Walmart, on the cruise ships, and at the club" — and even "want it pumping through [their] veins with an ivermectin chaser."

Or Reid's unprovable accusation that Minaj, by expressing her vaccine hesitancy on Twitter, "put people in the position of dying" of the virus.

The hits just keep on coming

But viral social media hits are at stake here, folks — and Reid smelled the blood in the water and kept going for the jugular on Thursday.

Speaking to author and professor Michael Eric Dyson about Minaj's vaccine hesitancy — and general hesitancy in the black community — Reid revisited her own reluctance to get a COVID-19 vaccine not long ago.

"I was hesitant," Reid told Dyson. "When [former President] Donald Trump was out there controlling the CDC and controlling the FDA and manipulating them and making them put out falsehoods, anybody rational was hesitant."

But now with President Joe Biden in office, Reid is just fine with the vaccines and added to Dyson that "the reality is now, what I really fear is ... more masses of people dying ... and disproportionally they look like you and me, Michael. And what scares me is that people are creating a cultural imperative to set themselves up for death when the people pushing them to do it like Tuckums [i.e. Fox News' Tucker Carlson] are vaccinated and safe — and even if they got COVID are gonna get all the monoclonal antibodies. They could give a damn if Nicki Minaj gets COVID and dies. They don't give a damn about us."

How did folks react to Reid's claims?

Quite a few observers were only too happy to point out Reid's partisan-fueled vaccine hesitancy when Trump was in office. Here's the start of a Twitter thread containing a jaw-dropping number of examples of Reid's crusade under Trump:

And while the following tweet is noted in the above thread, it deserves a spotlight, since Reid actually declared vaccine hesitancy even if Biden were elected:

Image source: Twitter

Others had the following to say:

• "It's the same vaccine," one Twitter user observed.
• "OMG. That was rich. She acts as though we're talking about a different vaccine, a different CDC and a different FDA than we were a year ago," another user said. "Nothing has changed except now Joe Biden is in the White House. What a flake."
• "Joy was against vaccine when Trump was in office but now OKs mandating the exact same vaccine because... science?" another commenter asked. "Joy is a racist. Joy could care less about people dying or the efficacy of the vaccine. She pushes whatever narrative she is told and lives untouched in her bubble."
• "More proof that if Trump told everyone to wear masks in March 2020, the entire left would be anti-maskers," another commenter noted.