U.S. News
Joy Reid Suggests MSNBC Firing Tied to Trump Gaza Stances
Clear Facts
- Joy Reid claims her abrupt departure from MSNBC was not due to poor ratings.
- She suggested her coverage of Donald Trump and the Gaza conflict contributed to her firing.
- MSNBC did not publicly comment on the reasons for her removal.
Former MSNBC host Joy Reid said in a recent interview that her exit from the network came without warning and wasn’t related to ratings performance. She shared that two weeks before being fired, a ratings meeting confirmed her show was performing adequately.
“And we had actually just had a ratings meeting, like, two weeks before I was fired, where they were like, ‘You guys are actually losing – you guys lost less than, you know, your competitors, and you’re actually doing fine,'” Reid said.
She noted that rumors about her being on the chopping block made her producers uneasy, but that she received no official warning before her termination. She stated that management never gave her a direct reason for her dismissal.
“Nobody had called me. Nobody had said, ‘You did something wrong, you’re in trouble, you’re on probation.’ I had gotten nothing. Then I get a text message early the next morning saying, ‘Can you talk at noon?’ And I was fired immediately. There was no warning. And I asked, ‘Well, what, you know, what’s the [issue]?’ Nothing. They were just like, ‘Oh, we just want to make some changes.’ They never said why. So I’ve had to live in the rumor mill with everybody else.”
Reid insisted that her reporting on Donald Trump and the Gaza conflict likely made network management uncomfortable, hinting at outside pressures influencing the decision.
“One of them is Trump, because Trump is suing everybody,” Reid said. “I mean, he’s literally threatening people to the point where ‘60 Minutes’ is shook, where ABC News is shook. You know, he’s verbally threatened Comcast by name, named [Comcast CEO] Brian Roberts by name, and all of these are businesses that want to do business that need the FCC approval. They actually have to have the federal government’s approval to do mergers, acquisitions… He can pull your license… so it’s like everybody is trying to navigate this really deranged man. So I think they’re activating out of a sense of ‘we don’t want to poke the bear too much.'”
She also commented on how covering sensitive topics can make larger media companies nervous about backlash.
“I think the other piece is Gaza,” she continued. “And you just can’t get away from the fact that talking about Gaza in a way that humanizes Palestinians is not the usual way that cable news operates, or that any news in this country operates for whatever reason, that topic makes people uncomfortable.”
After her removal, Reid said she stood firm on her convictions about controversial issues.
“I am not sorry I stood up for those things because those things are of God,” Reid said in February. “And you know, I’m a church girl, too, and those are the things that I was taught were of God. So I’m not sorry. I’m just proud of my show.”
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