MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Rips Her Own Network In Fiery Tirade Over Joy Reid Ouster: ‘A Bad Mistake’
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Rachel Maddow fired inside the MSNBC tent on Monday night shortly after Joy Reid hosted the last episode of The ReidOut.
Reid’s departure is just one of several changes at the network, which is overhauling its programming.
In a stunning move, it was reported on Sunday that MSNBC was canceling Reid’s program and that she would exit the network. During Monday’s sendoff, Reid welcomed Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Nicolle Wallace, who bid her farewell. Wallace said losing Reid is “like losing a limb.”
About 90 minutes later during The Rachel Maddow Show, the eponymous host made clear she is not a fan of the personnel move:
She is leaving the network altogether and that is very, very, very hard to take. I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12 and I have had so many different kinds of jobs, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid.
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, 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.
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. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.
But there’s just one other piece of it that you should know. From your side of the TV screen, you will mostly see changes in terms of who’s in the anchor chair, and actually everybody who’s going to be in anchor chairs from here on out are great colleagues and great at what they do. And you are not going to be disappointed in who’s on our air and what you’re going to be seeing.
Maddow went on to say that the network’s off-air employees are “really being put through the wringer.”
“Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building are facing being laid off,” she said. “They’re being invited to reapply for new jobs. That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it’s not the right way to treat people. And it’s inefficient and it’s unnecessary, and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work.”
Reid’s show will be replaced with a panel program featuring three people of color: Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez.
Watch above via MSNBC.