Rachel Maddow Speaks Out About Joy Reid’s MSNBC Axing

Rachel Maddow has spoken out against MSNBC‘s decision to axe Joy Reid, letting her viewers know she thinks the network has made “a bad mistake.”

On Monday’s (February 24) edition of The Rachel Maddow Show, the host addressed Reid’s departure, just hours after Reid fronted her final episode of The ReidOut earlier that day. At the top of her show, Maddow said Reid’s exit was “very, very, very hard to take.”

“There is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid,” she continued. “I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC.”

Maddow added, “And, personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call, and I understand that. But that’s what I think.”

Reid’s exit comes amid a major shake-up at MSNBC, which also sees Alex Wagner losing her nightly prime time show. Wagner will remain on as a senior political analyst for the network.

Maddow called it “unnerving” that “both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend.”

Current hosts of The Weekend, Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez, will now move to weekdays at 7 p.m. to host a new ensemble news hour.

Maddow said viewers won’t be disappointed by the replacement anchors but acknowledged it’s “the people who get our shows on the air” who are “really being put through the ringer.”

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“It has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it is not the right way to treat people, and it’s inefficient and it’s unnecessary,” she stated.

Maddow also appeared on Reid’s final MSNBC broadcast earlier in the day. Reid used her last show to offer viewers advice on resistance during a “crisis of democracy.”

“I am bereft that The ReidOut is ending,” Maddow said in a farewell message. “I sort of can’t get beyond that. But that is also part of what I have to say to the country about this moment, which is, find people who you respect and trust and love and make common cause with them and help yourself by learning from them, and help them by standing up for them.”

Reid, who debuted her 7 pm show in 2020, spoke about her reaction to the end of her show in an emergency Win With Black Women call on Sunday (February 23). “[I’ve been through] every emotion, from anger, rage, disappointment, hurt, feeling guilt that I let my team lose their jobs,” she said. “But in the end, where I really land, and where I have landed on today is just gratitude.”