Joy Reid’s final show: Fired MSNBC host leaves viewers with dire message after controversial axing
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Hours after MSNBC boss Rebecca Kutler officially announced that Joy Reid’s show was ending and the longtime host was leaving the network amid a programming overhaul, Reid devoted her final broadcast to instructing her viewers on the ways to resist throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, warning them that fascism is “already here.”
The progressive firebrand was also joined by some of her fellow MSNBC hosts, who paid tribute to their departing colleague and likened her cancelation as “losing a limb,” while Reid lauded network star Rachel Maddow as their “fearless leader.”
Reid’s sudden cancelation has sparked backlash among liberals, with some claiming that “racism” or an attempt to curry favor with Trump factored into the network’s decision. Meanwhile, Reid has said she is “not sorry” for her unapologetically progressive commentary on her show, “whether it was the Black Lives Matter issues” or going “hard for immigrants who’ve done nothing but come to this country like my parents did and try to make a life and defended them.” MAGA pundits and Trump, meanwhile, have relished in the outspoken host’s departure.
At the top of her final episode of The Reidout on Monday night, Reid explicitly stated that the new Trump administration has brought on not just a constitutional crisis but was itself a fascist regime, imploring her audience to form a resistance against the president.
“When you are in the midst of a crisis, and specifically a crisis of democracy, how do you resist? When fascism isn’t just coming, it’s already here,” she warned.
“So what, if anything, can you do about it? Well, for one thing, you can try to learn from history. From what people in this situation, in countries around the world and in America have done before,” Reid added. “As my friend Rachel Maddow always says, history is here to help. America hasn’t always been a free country for everyone, and we’ve had resistance movements from day one, from enslaved people fighting their captivity.”
Citing Harriet Tubman, the Civil War, the women’s rights movement and the gay rights movement as examples, Reid said that Americans have always been fighting to make the United States a “free country for everyone” and a “true multiracial democracy.”
“And that is history’s most important lesson, right? That the most important thing, the first rule, is to fight back, to never stop resisting. Do not obey in advance,” she noted.
Towards the end of the broadcast, Reid was joined by network mainstays Maddow, Nicolle Wallace and Lawrence O’Donnell, who all heaped praise on the progressive host as the final minutes of her MSNBC tenure ticked away.
“Well, first I want to say that I love you, Joy, and that I am bereft that The ReidOut is ending. I really, I just can’t even, I sort of can’t get beyond that. So I want to say that,” an emotional Maddow stated. “But that is also part of what I think 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, you know, help yourself by learning from them and help them by standing up for them. And I think we have tried to do that.”
Returning the favor, Reid declared that Maddow was the network’s “fearless leader” and their “super friend,” letting MSNBC’s most prominent star know “we love her so much.” Meanwhile, Wallace said she felt nothing but “despair” over Reid’s cancelation, which she compared to “losing a limb.”
“And the only thing that chips away at that for me is that despair is the autocrat’s tool. It’s their most effective weapon. It costs nothing. It’s easy to deploy; it’s contagious,” Wallace said. “And then it puts in motion all the actions they want. Hopelessness. Isolation. Exasperation. Giving up. And so the only reason I will not wallow in what I feel about you leaving is, is because I think that’s what they want.”
Following Reid’s send-off, which also included her thanking her production crew, Maddow took a “point of personal privilege” on her Monday night program to criticize network management for the “bad mistake” it made in dropping Reid and canceling other shows hosted by women of color.
“I will tell you. It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two – count them – two nonwhite hosts in primetime, both of our nonwhite hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend,” Maddow declared. “And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.”
While the network is coming under fire externally and internally for pushing out Reid, her “fate had been all but sealed long ago,” media reporter Oliver Darcy noted this week. Reid had only signed a one-year construct extension last year, placing her in a vulnerable position and suggesting that she would be on the chopping block if the network looked to shake up the lineup, which it did this week.
“Fair or not, Reid had over the years become a lightning rod of right-wing criticism, frequently drawing the ire of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and offering an easy target to attack MSNBC’s editorial stances,” Darcy added. “While she had a devoted following, her freewheeling style and outspoken commentary—particularly on social media—often overshadowed the network and irked Comcast and NBCUniversal executives.”
The network is replacing The Reidout with a panel show hosted by Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez, who had been anchoring The Weekend on Saturdays and Sundays.
