Joy Reid claims 'white boy summer' is an 'explicit white supremacist message'

MSNBC’s Joy Reid claimed on Tuesday that "white boy summer" is "dangerous rhetoric" and an "explicit white supremacist message."

Reid noted that Donald Trump made an appearance at the People’s Convention in Detroit after meeting with black community leaders, stating that the Turning Point Action conference, an organization run by "anti-Dr. King and black pilots activist" Charlie Kirk, Reid claimed, featured Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec and his brother Kevin unfurling a flag that read "white boy summer" and tossing hats with the same slogan "to the screaming cult." In fact, the two men were welcomed by a cheering audience who were in on the joke, laughing, and having fun.

Posobiec took to the stage at the People’s Convention on Sunday with his brother, with the two sporting sunglasses, waving the flag and handing out hats to the audience. Posobiec told the crowd during his speech, "Kind of feels like it’s a white boy summer around here, but I’ll tell you something else. It’s also a summer for the red, white and blue."

"White boy summer was originally a line from a viral 2021 social media rant by legendary actor Tom Hanks’ lesser-known son, Chet Hanks. The rant played off Megan Thee Stallion’s hit 2019 song, Hot Girl Summer," Reid said, playing the clip of Chet Hanks saying that it was going to be a white boy summer, "I'm not talking about like Trump, you know, NASCAR-type white. I'm talking about, you know, me, John B., Jack Harlow-type white boy summer." Hanks does not support Biden due to his Covid and Ukraine policies.

"White boy summer quickly took off as a hilarious meme and people had a legit good time with it. But it wasn't long before the thirsty far right and white supremacists decided it was time to cancel everyone's fun and culturally appropriate the cultural appropriation for their own purposes, using the phrase in their online memes to try to attract unsuspecting white youth to their cause," Reid said.

Reid cited the Anti-Defamation League, which said that "while some white boy summer memes include white supremacist, neo-Nazi symbols such as swastikas or references to the white supremacist 14 words slogan, other white boy summer promoters are tactically watering down their content to attract less extreme users and disseminate their content widely."

Reid said she didn’t how many in the Detroit audience "grasping at the pink hats knew what they were signing up for," but Jack Posobiec "sure knew what he was doing when he strutted across that stage with that flag, because he’s a professional fascism-curious, right-wing troll."