Sharpton Defends Joy Reid in Nicki Minaj Spat — Name-Calling Was ‘Across the Line’

MSNBC “PoliticsNation” host Al Sharpton on Saturday chastised Nicki Minaj for her remarks directed at his colleague Joy Reid over the rap star’s coronavirus vaccine skepticism.

Reid recently told Minaj that she was putting people “in the position of dying” with her anti-vaccine tweets. Minaj later shot back by calling the MSNBC host an “Uncle Tomiana” and a “lying homophobic c–n.”

Sharpton’s message to Minaj was the name-calling Reid was “across the line.” He pled with her to instead work on “solutions” as members of the black community are dying disproportionately.

“I’m not a friend, but I am a fan of Nicki Minaj. I have a lot of respect for her artistry, and she’s broke through barriers. And I’m not going to get into the fact that the right-wing have embraced her and attack her for that because I don’t think that serves what we really are concerned about on all sides, and that is the life of people disproportionately in our community,” Sharpton outlined. “But I am going to say to name-call Joy Reid, someone that I have known and seen even before she came to this station — I’m not saying this because she’s a colleague. I knew her in black radio in Florida 20 years ago, and she’s put her career and neck on the line to cover stories and bring things mainstream. That’s across the line. I think that if people want to raise questions, fine, but leave the name-calling out of it, particularly someone that has had the, in my opinion, the model example of journalism that Joy Ann Reid has.”

He added, “They’re two black women that have got to the top of their field. We don’t need name-calling. We need solutions as we see disproportionate people die in our communities and in every community in the country.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

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