MSNBC’s Joy Reid was ridiculed and corrected on Twitter after she posted an incorrect explanation for FiveThirtyEight’s name Monday night.
“Here’s the thing: the reason there’s a thing called @FiveThirtyEight is because 538 was the margin in FL when the Republican SCOTUS reversed the 2000 election during a recount, making Dubya the president. That’s the kind of margin where races can flip. That’s not what’s up now,” posted the “ReidOut” host.
Some, like Media Matters’ Parker Molloy, offered a gentle correction: “I think it’s called that because that’s the number of votes there are in the Electoral College.” CNN’s Jake Tapper was among those who also mentioned that her assertion the Supreme Court “reversed” the election was also inaccurate.
Other Twitter users were harsher, questioning whether Reid has a note on her fridge reminding her how to make cereal, for instance.
From the well-meaning to the derisive, a number of Reid’s media colleagues pointed out that the Floridian vote margin between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 was 537. Still others made jokes about the “hackers” Reid blamed for old blog posts returning to sow disinformation using her Twitter account.
Stanford professor Keith Humphreys mused, “Twitter is a place where you can learn something new every day that isn’t true.”