Joy Reid doubles down on Erika Kirk attacks after TPUSA’s AMFest jab

The Turning Point USA president poked fun at the former MSNBC host during AmericaFest 2025

Far-left podcaster and former MSNBC host Joy Reid doubled down on her attacks against Turning Point USA president Erika Kirk after the latter’s jabs at Reid during AmericaFest 2025.

During her opening remarks at the TPUSA conference on Thursday, Kirk joked that Reid could use a “really good hug” and that she’d even touch the back of her head. This was in reference to Reid disparaging Kirk for the way she hugged Vice President JD Vance during a Turning Point USA event.

Reid reiterated on her show Friday that Kirk looked “very intimate” with Vance “in her saucy hot pants” and pushed back on Kirk’s offer for a hug.

Erika Kirk, widow of late right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, speaks at Turning Point’s annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona on Dec. 18, 2025. (Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images)

“The last thing I will say to Erika Kirk is this: Dear young lady, I don’t need a hug from you,” Reid said. “First of all, I would never let you get close enough to hug me ’cause I don’t trust you. And second of all, I don’t know if anybody ever told you – you’re pretty young – but don’t be offering to touch Black women’s hair. We don’t allow it. This is not the 19-teens. It’s not the 1920s or the 1930s. You cannot come up to me, touch me, or touch my hair. It won’t go. I don’t allow it. So, don’t offer to do that because that’s not going to happen.”

Reid also stood by her suggestion that Vance could leave his “Brown Hindu” wife to be with a “White queen” like Kirk to appeal to the MAGA base, claiming it was the MAGA base who were attacking Usha Vance’s race.

Former MSNBC host Joy Reid insisted that it was the MAGA base attacking Vice President JD Vance’s wife over her race and not her. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for ESSENCE)

“MAGA is the one doing the racism. Not me. All I’m saying is the ultimate MAGA fairytale would be for JD to leave Usha Vance alone and go run off with Charlie Kirk’s widow. It brings like the houses of MAGA together,” Reid said.

She told Kirk that she should instead focus on appealing to “White Christian nationalists” as a working single mom.

“You need to take care of minding your business, which is to keep that $80 million rolling in and figure out how you’re going to get those White Christian nationalists who follow Turning Point USA to understand why you working and not home with your children who now don’t have a daddy,” Reid said. “You are now a single mom, which they oppose.”

Joy Reid continued to attack Erika Kirk during her show on Friday. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for ESSENCE; Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

She continued: “You’re going to have to now figure out how you’re going to explain to your Turning Point USA base why you working and why you out rubbing on JD Vance’s back of his head and offering to rub on the back of mine instead of home with your kids because their ideology is that your behind should be in your house. That’s all I’m going to say.”