In a Zoom call with far-left African-American activists, Joy Reid tearfully spoke out about losing her (second) MSNBC show that was first rumored Friday night and confirmed Sunday, saying her “heart is so full” from support and belief that “my show had value” and “what I was doing had value.”
She also went down the laundry list of far-left positions she’s held, but framed her show (which was full of divisive, incendiary, venomous rhetoric) was all in glory of God and part of God’s plan for her.
Reid began by thanking a slew of supporters, including friends/fellow pundits Angela Rye, Tiffany Cross, Alicia Garza, and Cari Champion before saying she had “been through every emotion from, you know, anger, rage, disappointment, hurt, you know, feeling that, you know, guilt, you know, that I let my team lose their jobs.” She then broke down in tears:
But in the end, where I really land and where I’ve landed on today is just gratitude. Just pure gratitude and — and — and gratitude — not just because people would take the time to get on a call like this or to take care of me. But also that my show had value and that — I’m sorry — that it — what I was doing had value — had value. And in the end — I’m sorry I’m not. I try not to cry on TV and I think this kind of like me on TV. I apologize. And that, and then it kind of — and then it matter.
This went right into the list of things she discussed on her show, ranging from Black Lives Matter to “opened up people’s eyes to the fact that Asian Americans were being targeted and not just Black folks, that — or went hard for immigrants...or whether we’ve talked about what the President is doing that is subversive to the Constitution...defending books that people find inconvenient, you know, that Nikole Hannah-Jones put into our spirit that we need to understand 1619 as the real founding of this country...whether it’s talking about Gaza and the fact that we as the American people have a right to object, to have a right to object to little babies being bombed.”
She said all these issues mattered to her “because those things are of God. And, you know, I’m a church girl too and those — those are the things that I was taught were of God.”
The ReidOut host continued by saying she was “proud of my show” and her “little team that could” that was “constructed deliberately to represent every type of person in this country, every religion, every faith, every race, every region, every sensibility, every sexual orientation” in honor of fellow one-time MSNBC host, Melissa Harris-Perry.
Yes, the one who said your children aren’t actually yours, but belong to the collective. And she also won our 2015 Quote of the Year award for saying referring to someone as a “hard worker” was racist.
Going back to Reid, she spoke of her faith in stating she was “so proud of what we did and so grateful that God gave me nearly five years to do it and — and in total, nearly 10 years to do television my way on my terms.”
“I’m so deep in gratitude. I’m so deep in joy, even though I’m crying, I’m actually just so deep in joy and gratefulness that there’s nothing that can hurt me now, and I’m going to go forward and promise to all of you that the service I feel God put me on this Earth to provide,” she added.
Before wrapping, she hilariously asserted she “was put here is to try to tell the truth, to try to find the truth, and to try to explain the inexplicable and to try to make it make sense and that’s what I’ve always told my team” and, most importantly, “our job is not to be the news” but “help people to understand what’s happening, is to understand the horrors that are happening and to understand the joy[.]”
Once Reid publicly left the call (but, based on the comments afterward, she was merely listening in the background but off-camera), Rye thanked her as though she had serviced in the military and then launched into a declaration for black Americans to boycott MSNBC because America’s “on fire” and in a “code red...state of emergency.”
Notice in the video below she had a self-described Freudian slip of the Trump administration putting black Americans on the “chopping black”:
Angela Rye -- a former CNN commentator -- calls for a boycott of MSNBC because they've fired Joy Reid:
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 24, 2025
“We’ve got to move with courage...We are gonna operationalize #TVOff. So, still #WeNeedJoy but also #TDR. Joy Reid won two NAACP Image Awards this week. Joy Reid has been an… pic.twitter.com/WiyOeCu8ey
Cross, who was jettisoned from MSNBC in November 2022, similarly seethed, arguing “it is so rare for black women, black people, period, but black women to have a voice and a platform” because “[a]cross all newsrooms, only six percent of newsroom staff is black” and she was honored to have had a voice thanks to Reid and Harris-Perry.
Former MSNBC host Tiffany Cross refers to the network as a bunch of "colonizers" who take advantage of black women like Joy Reid and have fired her because she has "truth-telling courage."
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 24, 2025
She adds it's a lie being peddled in the press that her ratings weren't good pic.twitter.com/hnkHTlBeLv
Cross also joined in on the MSNBC boycott brigade (and not even to “hate watch”), hilariously suggesting those listening be more “uplifting” on social media and “don’t share things that are negative” or “repost even if you’re criticizing it.”
Later, when it was time for Color of Changes’s Rashad Robinson to speak, he also blasted MSNBC and warned African-American activists the supposed consequences of not fighting back. Somehow, he seemed to put MSNBC bosses on the side of Trump “enablers” (click “expand”):
When we don’t take action in these moments, we continue to lower the floor on what is acceptable, how they will treat us what corporations believe they can do and in this moment where corporations are finding any way to enable what’s happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, what’s happening on Capitol Hill, and all these other places, if we’re not running the type of campaigns that and the type of, and putting the type of energy behind holding enablers accountable with — the power will continue to be consolidated by the President and by all the people around him. And so, this moment is a moment of us recognizing that our power will lie, not just in trying to call out Donald Trump, but allowing all the forces that make this possible and one of those forces is to be able to cut off the storytelling and the issue in raising the issues that are so incredibly important in this moment. We will always lose in the back rooms if we don’t have people lined up at the front door, so as we talk about the work ahead, we need you all to line people up at the front door, so you’ve got organizations, you’ve got email lists, you’ve got text message lists. You’ve got all the ways that we can be engaging people over the next several weeks and beyond, but this is about the long-term taking of action. This is — it starts now with this, but it’s going to be a lot of other moments that we’re gonna have to take action, to build the muscle, to build the fortitude, and to build the focus to say not today, not tomorrow, and not ever, because that is gonna be what happens. That is gonna what we need to do to actually raise the floor on what’s acceptable. So, people need clear things to do, ways to take action. I want to uplift what Angela said in terms of supporting independent black media. The — the channels and the voices and the energy that so often doesn’t get our eyes, that sometimes we may have to search a little further for, but we know they’re telling the stories, they’re raising the issues sometimes going deeper. There are folks on this call whose platform and voices need more of our attention and we should be uplifting that, uplift that in the chat, uplift who you listen to, who you watch, who you follow so other folks can take note, because what we need to also do in this moment is make sure that we are channeling our energy, our eyes, our dollars and our — and our focus on the people who are actually gonna fully tell the stories and do the work to hold accountable those forces that are gonna stand in our way. So yes, we’re going to engage and turn and celebrate Joy on her last show. And then we’re gonna do the work to support all of the independent black voices moving forward, moving our energy to new places and new spaces where we can uplift those voices and uplift new energy.
To see the relevant transcript from the Zoom call, click here.
