After Donald Trump resoundingly won the Iowa caucuses on Monday night, the folks at MSNBC went haywire, refusing to air his victory speech. Rachel Maddow wailed about the “potential rise of fascism.” But Joy Reid added her own special touch: including both racism and anti-Christianity in a diatribe.

Reid, who for some reason colors her hair a very Nordic blonde, claimed white evangelical Christians want people of color to “bow down to them.”  She ranted about “Christian Nationalism,” and that conservatism conjoins with religion:

They see themselves as the rightful inheritors of this country, and Trump has promised to give it back to them.

All the things that we think about, about electability, about what are people gaming out, but none of that matters when you believe that God has given you this country, that it is yours, and that everyone who is not a White, conservative Christian is a fraudulent American, is a less real American. Then you don’t care about electability. You care about what God has given you. 

Finally, Reid concluded that white Christians just want black or brown people to submit to them.

White evangelical Christians of a certain mindset” think “that they own this country, that immigrants, that Brown people, that Hindus like Vivek Ramaswamy and his wife are illegitimate Americans. They are less legitimate Americans than they are.

They’re not trying to convince people and win people over through politics. What they’re saying is, ‘We own this country, and everyone will bow down to us.

Let’s be real here: if a white talking head on any major network — including Fox — had said those ugly racist words about people of color, the network would’ve given them the sack. And rightfully so. Yet Joy Reid continues to get away with her loathing of whites at MSNBC.

Where Does Joy Reid Get Her Facts?

Reid cited the left-wing Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)’s demographics data (which must be true!) that claimed that about 61% of Iowans are white Christians. That is in contrast, she said, to the nationwide average of about 42%. And that is why those white Iowans who go to church every Sunday hate non-white people and voted for Trump.

Joy Reid’s vision of white Iowans attending church. National Archives and Records Administration/public domain.

Except if Reid had done any amount of research, as I did, she’d find that according to an extensive 2014 survey by Pew, only 28% of Iowans are evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, 30% are mainline Protestants — whose churches are more liberal. In addition, 18% are Catholic.

Moreover, a more recent assessment of Iowa religion revealed that the state isn’t as evangelical as she thinks. Ryan Burge, who does data analysis of religion and politics, published his findings on the day of the caucus, stating:

So, with the Republican Iowa Caucuses happening today, I wanted to make this point clear – Iowa is not some bastion of Christian conservatism …

Just a quarter of all Iowans self-identify as evangelical. That’s essentially the same share as states like Illinois, Michigan, California, and New York State. In fact, Iowa is less religious than many of its neighbors like Nebraska (29%), Missouri (33%), and South Dakota (28%).

As for the alleged evangelicals that dominate Iowa — well, they just don’t.

It’s interesting to note that there aren’t a lot of evangelical traditions that dominate in Iowa. Non-denominationals are the largest in just one county. Otherwise it’s Missouri Synod Lutherans, the Reformed Church of America, and even the Amish have a strong presence in two counties across the Southern part of the state.

And finally:

Let’s just make this clear, though. Iowa is an incredibly bizarre state to be the first one to vote for candidates in this process. It’s incredibly white, it’s incredibly rural, and it’s not really that religious.

But such statistics and conclusions don’t serve Joy Reid and her withering hatred of white Christians, does it?

Why Iowa Republicans Voted for Trump

The massive turnout for Trump revealed several main themes: an increasing divide between college-educated and working class in the GOP; the desire for payback against the Democrats; and even an increasing hatred of the Republican party itself.

Michael Brendan Dougherty, a conservative who does not like Trump, wrote in National Review:

They believe he’s the strongest candidate, perhaps because he’s the largest personality. They want him because they liked the way he drove the opposition nuts. They want him for reasons of revenge because they feel that they were robbed of having “the full Trump” the first time because of Russiagate. And some want him because he’s more than a Republican: he’s against the Left, and in some crucial ways, he’s also against the Right.

While Oliver Wiseman and others opined in The Free Press:

Part of the answer lies in the shortcomings of the man who started the race as his main opponent … But a far more important factor stems from the massive divide between college-educated and working-class voters.

And Batya Ungar-Sargon, also at TFP:

The thing liberals don’t understand about the average Republican voter in 2024 is that they hate the Republican Party. The average liberal feels well-represented by the Democratic Party because the Democrats’ base, like the party leadership, are college-educated elites. They share the same list of priorities. But the average Republican voter is working class and truly loathes the Bush-era version of the Republican Party, which meant tax cuts for the rich, failed wars, and an economic agenda that outsourced jobs to China.

Finally, from Peter Savodnik on why Trump defeated Ron DeSantis:

They wanted the Duck à L’Orange, and they seemed convinced that anyone who wasn’t him was a squish. 

The reason why Iowa Republicans gave Donald Trump a massive victory may be any of those things, or all of those things. But his victory had nothing to do with race, evangelicalism, or the dreaded “Christian Nationalism” — whatever that may be. The racists here aren’t Christians in Iowa — the true racist is Joy Reid and her hatred of white Christians, who hold permanent residence in her febrile brain.

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Featured image: “Joy Reid, Host – The ReidOut, Political Analyst – MSNBC” by BrookingsInst is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Cropped.