Joy Reid

And it was a huge fight over that.

There were people who literally were all but chaining themselves to the Confederate flag monument and refusing to get away from it because they didn't want that flag brought down.

Can you imagine if the protesters on both sides of that issue, if Governor Nikki Haley had said, go and arrest the journalists, who I was interviewing people who were in full regalia of the Confederacy.

They were wearing their Confederate uniforms, their throwback uniforms.

And we walked up to them and interviewed them because that is our job.

When I was there, because I was in the midst of these protests on either side of that issue,

That is not a crime.

It is literally the job of journalism.

And what you've been doing in going to these sites of protest and interviewing people, as Colby said, including the pastor, including the people who were on the other side of that issue, and including some of the people who organized that protest.

I'm not sure what Pamela, Pam Bondi thinks journalism is, but that's what it is.

And I really just want to quickly, and everyone knows this, but I just want to read the First Amendment.

Just so that people can be reminded.

I'm gonna act, I'm really gonna be grandma right now.

And I'm gonna take out my first amendment and read it to you.

It says,

shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances therefore nothing that was happening inside that church was a crime if they want to try to come up with a crime for protesting

If the folks who own the church want to charge trespass or something like that, you can litigate that.

But the reality is the protests were constitutionally sound.

The journalism was constitutionally sound.

And the only reason that Pam Bondi's Department of Injustice has decided to try to prosecute you is probably because Donald Trump told her to.