Joy Reid took direct aim at Donald Trump and Elvis Presley during a fiery appearance on Wajahat Ali’s “The Left Hook” podcast, accusing both men—and others like them—of benefiting from what she called a long-standing pattern of cultural theft from Black Americans.
On the episode titled “How Mediocre White Men and Their Fragility Are Destroying America,” Reid charged that Trump’s changes to the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian were part of a broader conservative effort to rewrite cultural history while erasing the contributions of Black and Brown communities.
“These people cannot create culture on their own. Without Black people, Brown people, the DEIs, there’s no culture in America,” Reid said, rocking an “FDT” hat – short for “F##k Donald Trump” made popular by YG and Nipsey Hussle.
She took particular issue with Presley’s legacy, saying the so-called “King of Rock and Roll” built his fame on the back of Black artists without acknowledgment.
“We Black folk gave y’all country music, Hip-Hop, R&B jazz, Rock & Roll. They couldn’t even invent that, but they have to call a White man ‘The King.’ Because they couldn’t make Rock & Roll, so they have to stamp ‘The King’ on a man whose main song was stolen from an overweight Black woman,” she said, referring to Big Mama Thornton, the original performer of “Hound Dog.”
Elvis’s 1956 hit “Hound Dog,” widely regarded as a rock classic, was initially recorded by Thornton in 1952. The song’s commercial success under Presley has long been a flashpoint in discussions about cultural appropriation in American music.
Reid also criticized the political right’s approach to cultural discourse, accusing conservatives of lacking the intellectual capacity to engage in meaningful debate.
“They don’t have the intellectual rigor to actually argue or debate with us, right? And what they do is they tattle and tell. They run and tell teacher that ‘the Black lady or the Brown man was mean to me,’” she said.
The conversation centered on Trump’s influence over cultural institutions and the broader implications of who gets to define American heritage.
Reid argued that Trump’s administration attempted to sanitize historical narratives by reshaping spaces like the Smithsonian.
“They can’t fix the history they did. Their ancestors made this country into a slave — a slave hell, but they can clean it up now because they got the Smithsonian,” she said.
Reid also said Trump embodied the sins of America and the greed and shamelessness of capitalism.
“People try to say God put him in the White House, I don’t believe God is that cruel. Donald Trump is the physical embodiment of all of America’s sins. He’s sloppy, he’s unkempt, everything about him is false, his hair is a pretense of non-baldness, he’s old, but his followers try to pretend that he looks like Superman. He’s a terrible businessman and a failure who gets to fake success because he’s white.”