Posted on February 28, 2025

Joy Reid Is Gone

Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, February 28, 2025

Credit Image: © Michael Nigro/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire

If “journalism” lived up to the lofty image journalists have of themselves, Joy Reid would have been unemployed long ago. On her old blog, the Reid Report, she mocked homosexuals, called for Ann Coulter to kill herself, and compared John McCain to the Virginia Tech shooter. None of this is sending me to the fainting couch, but much of it, especially the “homophobia,” is grounds for termination in the chattering classes. In 2018, when these posts came to light, Joy Reid claimed her blog was hacked and somehow, she never noticed. She even said the FBI was investigating.

It would be a strange hacker who posts comments not dissimilar to some of her others, but none of this matters. She kept her job and lectured America nightly on racism, Russia, and fascism. Her implausible claims were forgotten, aside from the occasional opinion column, and ignored by her superiors at MSNBC.

This might be justified if Joy Reid had something to say, but you already know everything she believes. She is a non-white who demands (and gets) tribal political loyalty from her fellow blacks. She is a regular on Verified Hate/The X Files and in American Renaissance news headlines. She routinely accuses President Donald Trump and his supporters of racism and claims he is in league with Russia. She is a “daughter of immigrants,” barely American herself.

Among her greatest hits:

  • It was “wonderfully poetic” that the first person to criminally prosecute Donald Trump was black and that a black woman was doing the same in Georgia. Donald Trump, she claimed, was being held to account by the “very multicultural, multiracial democracy that he’s trying to dismantle.”
  • Blacks “literally, physically, built this country.”
  • The NRA wants bands of “warlords” who “kill at will” dominating America. rural voters are the main threat to American democracy, so the Electoral College must go.
  • Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal came from the criminal justice system’s links to the “slave catchers” that were part of the “foundational creation of the United States.” The people who tried to kill Mr. Rittenhouse were “defending black lives.”
  • ”Selfish” “white so-called Christian conservatives” mistakenly think the country “was built by them for them.” (If they think that, they’re right.)
  • Nikki Haley finished third in the Iowa caucuses because “she’s still a brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant.”
  • “The majority of white people are not the majority of this country. You do not negotiate with these people, you destroy them.”
  • “If Wayne LaPierre doesn’t understand that the next generation and the next will be unavailable to him and his vile philosophy, he needs a quick lesson in demographic math. . . .One way or another, the NRA and its extremist ideology are on a path to extinction.”
  • “[I]t has to be a humbling day for Donald Trump to finally face justice, particularly there in Washington DC. . . . The magistrate judge is Moxila Upadhaya. A woman of color. The judge he will be facing in the trial, a Jamaican-born woman of color. He seems to be facing sort of demographic reality.”
  • Media reports on missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito were just “missing white woman syndrome.”
  • Republican voters would trade tax cuts for the right openly to call blacks ni**ers.

This made Joy Reid a “heroine of the Resistance,” allowing her to don the mantle of American patriotism and call MAGA the party of traitors. She is a lightweight, but she had the legitimacy and credibility that came with a prestigious post.

Now that’s gone, a casualty of President Trump’s victory, which has “normalized” MAGA. Joy Reid’s declarations now look unhinged and politically obtuse. Her confident predictions of a Kamala victory or the legal doom awaiting Donald Trump were fanciful, and MSNBC’s audience may feel betrayed. In the critical 25-54 age bloc, MSNBC has lost about half its viewers since last year. For daytime shows, the network drew just 45,000 viewers; internet streamers easily beat that. Last month was the worst January in the network’s history, a sign that leftists are demoralized, not rallying to “The Resistance.” Meanwhile, Fox News has seen a strong ratings increase, with “Fox & Friends” increasing viewership by 29 percent since last year.

In February, the black woman who was president of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, announced she was leaving—voluntarily, we are told. She was the first black woman to head a cable news network. Rebecca Kutler, who mostly worked at CNN during her career, is her replacement. The documentaries and television programs she has produced (including on the U.S. Holocaust Museum and homosexuals in the military) reflect her views, but she is not obsessed with black issues.

One reason for the shakeup is that Comcast is trying to spin off MSNBC into a separate company and needs a short-term ratings increase to make such a company attractive. President Trump has attacked Comcast as “an illegal arm of the Democrat Party” that should be “forced to pay vast sums of money.” Joy Reid was an obvious candidate for a pink slip because of her low ratings and crazed views. Her show has lost almost 30 percent of its audience in the last year. People are tuning out takes such as:

  • Black women are no longer interested in “saving America” after President Trump’s election victory and will focus on “black spaces.”
  • Florida has a “right-wing, fascist type government.”
  • “Black voters came through for [Kamala] Harris, white women voters did not. This will be the second opportunity that white women in this country have to change the way they interact with the patriarchy.”

Joy Reid has been there since the beginning, on the panel when Ann Coulter famously predicted that Donald Trump could win the 2016 election, to the laughter and incredulity of Bill Maher’s studio audience.

Since the election, progressives have been looking for a message. Many seem to be settling on the idea that the second Trump Administration is a government of “oligarchs.” Elon Musk is a convenient foil. If the President cannot bring down prices on staples quickly, the Democrats may retake Congress in the midterms with a message of economic populism. Tax increases on the wealthy, an increase in the minimum wage, and more government regulations might win over some working-class people of all races who broke for Mr. Trump in 2024.

Republicans in Congress are already pushing the same tax cuts that disproportionately help the rich, as they did in 2017 — the one major legislative accomplishment of President Trump’s first term. Speaker Mike Johnson says it would violate conservatives’ “core principles” to give taxpayers a rebate with the money saved by Elon Musk’s DOGE, thus robbing spending cuts of popular appeal.

Still, progressives will have to show restraint: not yell about every Republican voter being a racist or President Donald Trump being a fascist. Joy Reid is the perfect example of what not to do. On her final broadcast, she even said that fascism is not just coming; it’s already here.

Therefore, for conservatives who do not want progressives to learn anything, it is good that many of them see Joy Reid as a martyr. There are signs of rebellion within MSNBC. Nicole Wallace compared her departure to “losing a limb.” Lawrence O’ Donnell said working with her had been an “honor.” Rachel Maddow said that it was a “bad mistake” to fire her and went further:

It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two — count them — two non-white hosts in primetime, both of our non-white 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.

How many non-white hosts does it take to be “defensible”? Perhaps Miss Maddow can give up her own slot.

Others on social media saw “racism.”

In fact, MSBNC is starting a new show with a panel of three. Two are black: Symone Sanders and former RNC chair Michael Steele. The former has politics not much different from Joy Reid’s, while Michael Steele has followed the traditional black Republican route of moving on from his unjustified high positions in the party to bashing it for being racist. The third host is reportedly Alicia Menendez, daughter of convicted Hispanic Democratic ex-senator Bob Menendez. Black journalist Eugene Daniels is also reportedly getting a show. MSNBC is not backing away from wokeness. It’s changing the faces in hope of better ratings.

It’s best if MSNBC stays the course. Unfortunately, white identity tends to be reactive. Most of us don’t become aware of our “whiteness” until it is attacked by non-whites pushing their own racial interests. And it’s easy to appease whites with even a symbolic retreat from “identity politics.” Joy Reid may be gone — for now — but the firestorm around that mediocrity and MSNBC’s continued diversity show that wokeness is far from dead. If ratings continue to fall, it will be interesting to see if MSNBC can trim its sails or if it is captive to extremists. We need people like Joy Reid. Let’s hope she gets a huge megaphone somewhere else.

About Gregory Hood

View all posts by Gregory Hood
Mr. Hood is a staff writer for American Renaissance. He has been active in conservative groups in the US. You can follow him on Gab.