Joy Reid took direct goal at Donald Trump and Elvis Presley throughout a fiery look on Wajahat Ali’s “The Left Hook” podcast, accusing each males—and others like them—of benefiting from what she known as a long-standing sample of cultural theft from Black Americans.

On the episode titled “How Mediocre White Men and Their Fragility Are Destroying America,” Reid charged that Trump’s adjustments to the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian were part of a broader conservative effort to rewrite cultural history while erasing the contributions of Black and Brown communities.

“These people cannot create culture on their own. Without Black people, Brown people, the DEIs, there’s no culture in America,” Reid mentioned, rocking an “FDT” hat – brief for “F##k Donald Trump” made in style by YG and Nipsey Hussle.

She took specific problem with Presley’s legacy, saying the so-called “King of Rock and Roll” constructed his fame on the again of Black artists with out acknowledgment.

“We Black folk gave y’all country music, Hip-Hop, R&B jazz, Rock & Roll. They couldn’t even invent that, but they have to call a White man ‘The King.’ Because they couldn’t make Rock & Roll, so they have to stamp ‘The King’ on a man whose main song was stolen from an overweight Black woman,” she mentioned, referring to Big Mama Thornton, the unique performer of “Hound Dog.”

Elvis’s 1956 hit “Hound Dog,” extensively thought to be a rock basic, was initially recorded by Thornton in 1952. The tune’s business success beneath Presley has lengthy been a flashpoint in discussions about cultural appropriation in American music.

Reid additionally criticized the political proper’s strategy to cultural discourse, accusing conservatives of missing the mental capability to interact in significant debate.

“They don’t have the intellectual rigor to actually argue or debate with us, right? And what they do is they tattle and tell. They run and tell teacher that ‘the Black lady or the Brown man was mean to me,’” she mentioned.

The dialog centered on Trump’s affect over cultural establishments and the broader implications of who will get to outline American heritage.

Reid argued that Trump’s administration tried to sanitize historic narratives by reshaping areas just like the Smithsonian.

“They can’t fix the history they did. Their ancestors made this country into a slave — a slave hell, but they can clean it up now because they got the Smithsonian,” she mentioned.

Reid additionally mentioned Trump embodied the sins of America and the greed and shamelessness of capitalism.

“People try to say God put him in the White House, I don’t believe God is that cruel. Donald Trump is the physical embodiment of all of America’s sins. He’s sloppy, he’s unkempt, everything about him is false, his hair is a pretense of non-baldness, he’s old, but his followers try to pretend that he looks like Superman. He’s a terrible businessman and a failure who gets to fake success because he’s white.”

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