Always adept at fomenting division and gaslighting MSNBC viewers to hate their political adversaries, network contributor and Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. insisted during Friday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports that police shootings in this day and age have continued to terrorize African-American communities because of former President Ronald Reagan.

Viewers almost certainly didn’t know that Glaude would invoke the Gipper when fill-in host Kasie Hunt wondered how, in context of recent mass shootings and police-involved shootings, “do we figure out how to move forward and have the next iteration of this conversation? What do we need to be focused on right now?”

At first, Glaude focused on the trauma families go through in losing a loved one: 

[N]ot only are there families grieving, but you can imagine, as these images are loop and they’re kind of layered on top of each other, you have to imagine communities, black folk around the country terrorized in interesting sorts of ways and problematic ways by having to see these images over and other again. Not only because they are horrific, but because they generate an occasion for us to worry about our own family members, about our own lives, about our children, our husbands, our wives, our aunts, our mothers, our fathers, that sort of thing. 

One way to address those fears would be for networks like MSNBC and academics like Glaude to provide context on police shootings and not sensationalize, but that would mean Glaude wouldn’t be able to call conservatives racist like did here while also invoking the 40th President: ”We have to understand for generations, the age of Reagan what defined by a form of policing black and brown communities that had violence at its core. We thought of these folks as super predators, we thought of ‘tough on crime’ as the way in which we modeled it.” 

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Glaude eventually got around got around to giving a nondescript answer to Hunt’s question:

You think about the very ways in which our communities have been perceived to justify this form of policing. So, we have to in some ways…challenge the underlying assumptions…in surveilling, containing and surveilling black folk, brown folk. We have to challenge what Melissa [Murray] just suggested. Not challenge, we have interrogate what we mean by public safety when it comes to particular communities.

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Here is the relevant transcript:

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports
April 16, 2021
12:11 PM ET

KASIE HUNT: Well, Eddie Glaude Jr., so much pain across — across the country. Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center, now, Chicago. Communities grieving at the loss of — of — of — these — of pieces of themselves essentially, especially for the family members of the victims here. To Melissa’s point, how do we figure out how to move forward and have the next iteration of this conversation? What do we need to be focused on right now? 

EDDIE GLAUDE JR: Let me just say Kasie, you’re absolutely right. There are — not only are there families grieving, but you can imagine, as these images are loop and they’re kind of layered on top of each other, you have to imagine communities, black folk around the country terrorized in interesting sorts of ways and problematic ways by having to see these images over and other again. Not only because they are horrific, but because they generate an occasion for us to worry about our own family members, about our own lives, about our children, our husbands, our wives, our aunts, our mothers, our fathers, that sort of thing. So, that’s the first thing. The second thing is that we have to understand that for generation — for generations, the age of Reagan what defined by a form of policing black and brown communities that had violence at its core. We thought of these folks as super predators, we thought of “tough on crime” as the way in which we modeled it. Remember the black box in Chicago emerges out of this framework. You think about ramparts in Los Angeles. You think about the very ways in which our communities have been perceived to justify this form of policing. So, we have to in some ways, Kasie, just very quickly, challenge the underlying assumptions —

HUNT: You got the floor Eddie as far as I’m concerned

GLAUDE: — in surveilling, containing and surveilling black folk, brown folk, right? We have to challenge what Melissa just suggested. We have to — not challenge, we have interrogate what we mean by public safety when it comes to particular communities.