Learn English – Pronunciation of ‘during’ in NA English

Take a look at this chart.

I will reproduce the relevant section of it.

. red raid RP e~ɛ ɛɪ AmE ɛ eɪ~e ScE ɛ e AusE e æɪ

So in Southern British English, the distinction between red and raid is that the vowel of raid is a diphthong (and is longer), and /e/ and /eɪ/ are reasonable symbols for these vowels. In Scottish English, the distinction between red and raid is that the vowel of red is more open, and the most reasonable symbols for them are /ɛ/ and /e/.

In American English, raid is distinguished from red both by being a diphthong and by being closer. In fact, some American dialects pronounce this phoneme as a monophthong if it's before a voiceless consonants (as in rate). The phoneme /e/ from other languages is generally heard as the phoneme /eɪ/ by Americans, so the open/closeness seems more important in recognizing the phoneme than whether or not it's a diphthong.

So as an answer for your question: red might be pronounced as /red/ in RP (standard British English) and in Australian English, but it is not in American English and Scottish English.

I'm not a linguist, but I come from the South East of England. This way of talking is now commonly described as Estuary English.