Today's AM Joy show on MSNBC provided a virtual parody of liberal-elite condescension to Trump supporters. Joy Reid kicked things off by finding it "confusing" that Trump's populist base supports him despite supposedly not "getting anything economically out of this plutocracy."

It's a recycling of the old liberal complaint of "What's the Matter with Kansas?": those poor, benighted cultural conservatives allegedly voting against their own interests (against redistributing all the wealth).

Ultraliberal writer Jane Mayer of The New Yorker [infamous for co-authoring a book trashing Justice Clarence Thomas with Jill Abramson while they were reporters at The Wall Street Journal] explained to the befuddled Reid that Trump's "racist and anger-laced" rhetoric "excites the lower-educated part of his base, the white-male base, particularly. And so he's saying things that make his supporters feel good."

In other words, according to Mayer, those racist hayseeds, hicks, and rubes are too dumb to understand, or just don't care, that they're getting ripped off by the ruling class. Mayer sounds like a perfect echo of longtime New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who proclaimed in 1972 “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon."

Here's the transcript.