Former MSNBC host Joy Reid claimed she does not believe President Donald Trump plans to leave the Oval Office, adding that it is “insane to assume” next year’s midterm elections will be “normal.”
Reid appeared on author and podcast host Wajahat Ali’s show, noting how several Republican lawmakers voted in favor of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act despite having major criticisms against it. Because of this, Reid claimed Republicans are not concerned about reelection.
“Whenever Democrats say to me, ‘This is the reason we have to coalesce for 2026.’ I always add to the end of that sentence, ‘Yeah, assuming we actually have free and fair elections.’ I think it’s insane, honestly, to just assume we’re going to have normal elections next year. I don’t assume that,” Reid said.
“The way Trump is behaving, he’s not acting like somebody who worries that his party will lose power or that even if the party — even if somehow we had normal elections and Democrats took control of either the House or the Senate — he’s not acting like somebody who’s worried about the consequences of that,” she added. “This is somebody who is behaving as an autocrat, because they don’t anymore believe, he said it during the election, ‘I don’t need your votes anymore,’ and he doesn’t.”
Reid said that she believes Trump plans to stay in office until his death — “like Putin,” adding he is “making so much money now” as president. She then claimed that Republican lawmakers are presuming that they will implement “enough restrictions” to prevent themselves from getting voted out.
The former Reidout host added that it would take an “extraordinary movement to get rid of them,” and this is why New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani won the city’s Democratic primary election. She argued that in the face of “pure fascism,” the typical response is “a version of socialism,” suggesting that voters are tired of “tepid” politics from Democratic lawmakers and instead want “something equally extreme.”
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Last month, Reid speculated that her show at MSNBC was canceled due to both her discussions about Trump and the conflict in Gaza. She pushed back on the possibility that her show’s ratings were the culprit behind her ousting at the network, stating that her numbers were “fine.”
Regarding the future of the Democratic Party, Reid said it is “barely hanging on ” but did not want to “cede the country to Trumpism.” She said that she wants “an effective fighter,” name-dropping Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) as a possible candidate to lead the party.
