During the final segment of Saturday’s edition of AM Joy, host Joy Reid pushed MSNBC's impeachment obsession, interviewing author Brenda Wineapple. Reid prefaced the interview by comparing Donald Trump to the notoriously racist President Andrew Johnson, whom she described as “another presidential villain.” The MSNBC host repeatedly doubled down on that comparison in addition to advancing the myth that the two major political parties “reversed” in the time between the Civil War and the present day.

After introducing Wineapple, Reid reinforced the comparison of Trump to Johnson by quoting from a New York Times article called “Donald Trump, Meet Your Precursor.” Excerpts from the article appeared on screen along with the photograph that accompanied the article; which features part of Trump’s face superimposed onto a picture of Johnson. Reid read aloud from the piece, seeming to agree with every word of it: “both men made an undisguised championship of white supremacy - the lodestar of their presidencies - and played on the politics of racial division.”

When she finished reading the excerpt, Reid asked Wineapple, author of the book The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation: “Where do you see the through-line between these two men and their impeachments?” Wineapple referred to Johnson’s desire to stand “in the way of civil rights for former enslaved people” and “deny them political rights as well” as a “through-line” to what’s taking place in Washington right now.

Another “through-line” mentioned by Wineapple appeared to delight Reid even more. According to Wineapple, Johnson “called the press the enemy of the people, he denied the legitimacy of Congress, he obstructed justice, he abused his power.” At this point, Reid quipped “Other than hosting a reality show, it sounds like the same guy” before Wineapple continued to compare Trump to Johnson by saying Johnson “did have rallies.”

Reid’s argument that the parties “reversed” likely rests on the fact that the South, which used to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, now votes mostly Republican. Perhaps it never occurred to Reid that the South votes Republican because, as Dr. Carol Swain pointed out in a PragerU video exposing the myth of the “Southern Strategy,” “The South itself has changed. Its values have changed. The racism that once defined it doesn’t anymore. Its values today are conservative ones: pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-small government.”

Don’t expect Reid and her colleagues to start telling the truth about the “southern strategy” anytime soon. After all, it’s much more fun for them to smear Trump (and his voters) as backward racists.

A transcript of the relevant portion of Saturday’s edition of AM Joy is below. Click “expand” to read more.