The Joy Reid show did its best today to stoke fears that President Trump would refuse to leave office if he loses the 2020 election. Dark theories were floated, including the notion that Trump would enlist the military in a "coup d'etat," with support from Republican "monarchists" in Congress. There was also criticism of Nancy Pelosi for refusing to pursue impeachment.

A simultaneously hilarious and infuriating moment came when former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said that there is a "much bigger threat now" of Trump refusing to leave office than there was during Nixon's day. Why? Because back then, "we had basically three networks, and they all had the same facts. Now you have this awful thing where we have a bubble of people who believe facts that are totally made up."

Translation: liberals are nostalgic for the good old days of the liberal media oligopoly. Now, liberals lament, we have this "this awful thing" in which the left's stranglehold has been broken, and people have alternative sources of information.



The segment kicked off the paranoia parade with a clip from Michael Cohen's congressional testimony in which he darkly predicted: "I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition power."

Wine-Banks ended the scare-mongering segment by warning, "you could say it can’t happen here. I think a lot of people in past history have said the same thing and it did happen. And we have to be vigilant now, and we have to really get out the vote." That last line actually gave away the game: what better way to "get out the vote" than by frightening Dems into believing that unless they vote in massive numbers, President Trump will cling illegitimately to power?

We reported yesterday on Malcolm Nance's ominous suggestion that the nation could be lost if Trump win's re-election. Today, panelist Midwin Charles sounded a similarly dire note, wondering "what kind of democracy will there be by November 2020?"



Here's the transcript. Click "expand" to read more.