MSNBC host Joy Reid suggested Republicans wanted to "mandate" childbirth and bring back slave labor in a rant responding to a Republican senator's claim that "we need more kids."
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., made the comment during a media interview explaining his support for the Alabama Supreme Court ruling deeming frozen embryos are children. Reid responded to the news clip on her TikTok and questioned Tuberville's motives.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the single dumbest member of the United States Senate: Tommy Tuberville," she told her followers before reacting to the clip. She asked if the Republican was calling for a childbirth "mandate," suggesting America was turning into "The Handmaid's Tale."
"Who's the ‘we’? You're a federal officer, you're a U.S. Senator, are you saying the federal government needs more kids? I wasn't aware there was a federal mandate for the government of the U.S. to demand an increase in [the] population. Where does that mandate come from?" she asked in the post. "For what?"
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"The United States has a population of north of 327 million people. Why do we need more kids?" Reid continued.
Under the video were hashtags about "Christofascism" and "Underhiseye," a reference to "The Handmaid's Tale." Reid often compares conservative social policies to the religious dystopian story.
She went on to mock Republicans "screaming" for stronger border security amid news that nearly 7.3 million migrants have illegally crossed the southwest border under President Biden's watch.
She questioned if Republican lawmakers were touting false data about the surge in illegal migrants.
"Your party, Senator Tuberville, is the one screaming that ten million immigrants, which I don't even know that number makes any sense, because it doesn't, have streamed into the country since Joe Biden has become president, and you're claiming that's too many people, that if more people come into the southern border this is some sort of crisis," she said in a mocking tone.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has tracked over 1 million migrant encounters in the current fiscal year, the earliest this number has ever been reached.
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"But now you're saying, ‘we need more kids,’?" she asked in disbelief. "Can you explain, who's the ‘we’ and what's the purpose?"
The MSNBC host then connected Tuberville's comments to Alabama's history of slavery. She proposed a theory that Republicans want a stronger border in order to take advantage of poor Black people.
"Are you saying the state of Alabama needs more kids because you think those populations will include people who maybe are destitute and desperate enough if you kick out the immigrants, like a lot of y'all want to do, and you could make them do the work that the migrants are doing now?" she asked. "Because that kind've sounds slavery-ish!"
Reid then wondered aloud if Tuberville as a "White guy," was actually proposing "The great replacement theory" of increasing the White population.
"That's a little creepy. A little ‘Handmaid’s Tale,' don't you think?" she asked.
Circling back to the Alabama IVF case, Reid explained her opposition to the court ruling, claiming embryos weren't alive and were nothing more than "frozen tissue."
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that frozen embryos are considered children, in response to two wrongful death cases brought by three couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed in an accident at an Alabama fertility clinic. The decision prompted three fertility providers to halt services in the state.
Reid said the case showed that Alabama lawmakers wanted poor women to be forced to have babies, so the state would have a "cheap, desperate workforce" comparable to the "Antebellum system."
The far-left host is one of the faces of MSNBC's political coverage and helps lead its coverage of breaking political news events.
Fox News' Melissa Rudy, Anders Hagstrom and Griff Jenkins contributed to this article.
