February 24, 2025 - 8:00pm
MSNBC has reportedly cancelled Joy Reid’s show The ReidOut in a major reshuffle — and conservatives are celebrating.
“Remember when Joy Reid laughingly mocked ‘white women tears’ as pathetic and offensive to her?” commentator Megyn Kelly asked on X. “Good riddance,” she went on. “Deeply saddened by the passing of Joy Reid’s MSNBC show,” echoed the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh. “It was a great resource for right wing podcasters looking for a clip to play and make fun of.”
Though the jubilation was swift and savage, it wasn’t necessarily unwarranted. Reid, who has hosted a primetime show at the network since 2020, may not have persuaded many neutral viewers to her side, but she has offered Republicans plenty of clickbait with her incendiary and divisive commentary, including suggesting that “white women in this country have to change the way that they interact with the patriarchy” after they failed to turn out in sufficient numbers for Kamala Harris in November.
A favourite trope of Reid’s involves comparing Republicans to Nazis. Before the 2024 election, she warned that the GOP ticket met “the textbook definition of fascism”, comparing the now-President and Vice President to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Back when Ron DeSantis was aiming for a GOP presidential primary win, Reid called him a “dictator in the making”.
Occasionally, she branched out from Nazi parallels to terrorist comparisons. “I bring up the Taliban a lot […] but the thing about Republicans now is that they are acting in a very Talibanesque way,” she said in reference to the passage of anti-abortion legislation through the democratic process. It wasn’t the first time she had made the comparison.
Reid, who boasts a Harvard degree, also claimed that she only received it because of affirmative action. Perhaps she feels the same way about her position at MSNBC, since her status as a black woman was loudly trumpeted when she moved from a weekend show to primetime.
Despite her apparent progressive credentials, Reid has not always been so right-on. In 2018, before she had been elevated to the coveted 7pm slot, she was outed for alleged blog posts making jokes at the expense of gay people. “Most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing,” she wrote. Reid’s apology tour included denying the posts were hers before admitting that her “hacker” defence was bogus. She apologised for “being dumb or cruel or hurtful”, without explicitly owning up to the comments. If that scandal wasn’t enough to keep MSNBC from promoting her, the endless Hitler and Taliban comparisons are probably not the reason she’s now been shown the door.
Sure, there is certainly a shift happening in mainstream media after Donald Trump’s reelection. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with him before the election “to restart communications”, much to the chagrin of their viewers. Even the ladies of ABC’s The View were told to lay off the President a bit last month.
But Reid’s replacements are not exactly going to appeal to Right-of-centre, or even moderate, voters. Under the direction of new president Rebecca Kutler, looking for a network shake-up as ratings plummet, the show will be taken over by the three co-hosts of morning show The Weekend.
Symone Sanders Townsend’s résumé includes press secretary for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders and senior adviser to both former president Joe Biden and former vice president Kamala Harris. Alicia Menendez, daughter of a former Democratic senator just sentenced to 11 years in prison, has previously supported Democratic campaigns including her father’s. Michael Steele, who was the chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2009 until 2011, will not add much ideological diversity. “The hell with Republicans!” he concluded on air earlier this month.
In short, MSNBC’s reshuffle will preserve its Left-wing credentials. Axios reported that “Kutler plans to […] elevate some of its most progressive voices.” Before the announcement of Reid’s departure, Variety noted that “[g]iving both [Inside With Jen Psaki and The Weekend] new space suggests MSNBC is eager to maintain its progressive stance, rather than trying to tack towards middle ground.”
What all this really means, however, is that the network is neither kicking out Reid for making anti-Trumpism her whole personality nor going in an even more radical route. Instead, it may just be looking for fresh faces willing to toe the Democratic Party line.
Reid may not have been able to own up to her past comments, but she was a true believer when it came to progressive postures such as promoting critical race theory, smashing the patriarchy, and blaming various races and sexes for voting the wrong way. If the Democrats are to have any hope of winning in 2028, they’ll have to try a different strategy — a more appealing one than could ever be endorsed by the woman who suggested that Harris ran a flawless campaign.
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