Amber Rose slams Joy Reid for criticizing RNC speech: 'Stop being a race baiter'
Amber Rose has a thorn in her side, and it's MSNBC host Joy Reid.
The former reality TV star clapped back at Reid's criticism of her speech on the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, in which Reid spoke directly to Black viewers and called Rose "racially ambiguous."
"I don’t want to say she’s Black because she has said she’s not, so I don’t want to say this Black woman,” said Reid, in reference to Rose calling herself both white and Black over the years
“This woman who is of whatever race that she has claimed, she’s said she’s not Black, but (the RNC) brought somebody whose whole career is based in Black culture.”
Who is Amber Rose? Model who once decried Trump will now speak at RNC
Reid added: “I don’t know anyone who takes their political cues from Amber Rose, but just in case you do, you might want to duplicate doing your own research, because she might not have done it thoroughly."
"Hi @JoyAnnReid I’ve never said I wasn’t black I said I identify as biracial. I’m not going to invalid my white father to make you feel more comfortable. Stop being a race baiter ur president does enough race baiting for all of us," Rose wrote in a Tuesday post on X.
USA TODAY has reached out to MSNBC reps for comment.
In her convention speech, Rose addressed the topic of race, saying that “Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re Black, white, gay or straight, it’s all love. And that’s when it hit me. These are my people, this is where I belong.”
Rose is a rapper and model. She appeared on several reality TV shows, including “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” “Dancing With the Stars" and “America’s Next Top Model” and also hosted her own talk show, “The Amber Rose Show," which ran for one season in 2016.
Candace Owens calls Amber Rose's speech 'highlight of the evening'
Conservative political commentator Candace Owens came to Rose's defense on Tuesday's episode of her podcast, "Candace."
"It's understandable that people had some reaction — suddenly 'What is Amber Rose doing here?'“ Owens said. "It spoke to a lot of people. Her speech was a highlight of the evening."
Owens noted that she's spoken with Rose and continued, "She’s very much struggling right now because of this horrible limbo of realizing your friends on the left don’t want you anymore because God forbid you wear a MAGA hat, but then your potential friends on the right are crawling through your pages and saying, ‘Ha, ha, ha, look at this girl — she's a conservative? She's supposed to be on stage?'"
"Let's just not do that. Let's just press pause for a second and give her the space to learn," Owens said.
Social media reacts to Amber Rose at the RNC
However, many Republicans criticized Rose for her previous involvement in founding a protest movement against rape culture and victim-blaming and her vocally pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ+ stances.
Posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, show both support and criticism of Rose. But there were also some who took the opportunity to respond with humor.
Here is a compilation of some of those posts:
i think i skipped a few chapters because wtf is amber rose doing speaking at the RNC for trump pic.twitter.com/09GYaf0ocg
— matt (@mattxiv) July 16, 2024
The RNC dedicating its first night to "diversity" is giving the same energy as my daughter eating her vegetables first. It's not that she enjoys them, she just wants to get the out of the way so nobody will bother her about them later. Amber Rose just up there being broccoli.
— @TheCoreyRichardson on Threads. Follow Me There. (@vexedinthecity) July 16, 2024
Wait wait wait, Amber Rose got a prime time slot at this disaster?!?! pic.twitter.com/OYOdHpq2W0
— Colleen Carmody (@ColMarie21) July 16, 2024
can't wait until i inevitably have to explain who Amber Rose is to senior New York Times editors https://t.co/oLNJFG4R2m
— Michael Gold (@migold) July 8, 2024
That was a really smart move putting Amber Rose up there as a speaker at the convention.
I never thought that I would see the day when a bald woman with a tattoo across her forehead would be an RNC speaker. She did a great job.— Drew Hastings (@drewhastings) July 16, 2024
Who is Amber Rose? Meet the model who spoke at the Republican National Convention
Last week, Rose announced that she would deliver a RNC speech in Milwaukee.
“It’s True! I’m speaking at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee #MAGA,” Rose posted on X. The 40-year-old mom, who shares Sebastian "Bash" Taylor with rapper Wiz Khalifa, was included on convention organizers' list of speakers.
Rose, who famously had a long-term relationship with Kanye West, voiced her support for Trump in a video earlier this year, in which she donned Trump supporters' distinctive red "Make America Great Again" hat.
According to a post on TV network Oxygen's official website, Rose previously appeared in the 2015 documentary "Light Girls" and addressed her racial experiences with colorism.
"With my family, they feel like they're more superior or better than an African American because 'we're Creole' and 'we have culture,' and that's something I battle with most of my life," she said in the documentary, according to Oxygen.
Contributing: Jolan Kruse, Victoria Moorwood, USA TODAY network; KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Amber Rose slams MSNBC's Joy Reid for RNC speech criticism
