Joy Reid gets emotional as she speaks out about MSNBC firing in her first interview

Joy Reid wept as she broke her silence after being fired from MSBNC, expressing her ‘anger and rage’ over her ousting.

The ultra-liberal commentator made it clear that she has no regrets, despite the cancellation of her show, The Reid Out, as the struggling network is in the process of restructuring its content.

During a discussion on the Win With Black Women podcast via Zoom, Reid expressed, ‘I’ve experienced a range of emotions… from anger, frustration, and disappointment to sadness. I even felt guilty, thinking that I had let down my team and caused them to lose their jobs.’

However, she ultimately expressed her gratitude, emphasizing, ‘But ultimately, where I find myself landing is in a place of gratitude. I am purely thankful, not only for the people who took the time to connect with me in discussions like this or to support me personally, but also for the fact that my show held significance.’

Reid broke down as she explained that she’s not sorry for having gone ‘hard on so many’ progressive issues like Black Lives Matter or immigrant rights on her primetime slot.

‘Whether it’s talking about any of these issues and, yes, 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,’ Reid went on.

‘And and where I come down on that is I’m not sorry. I am not sorry that I stood up for those those things because those things are of God.’

Network president Rebecca Kutler revealed MSNBC has not heard from Reid while addressing staffers of The Reid Out on Sunday weekend following the cancelation, Status News reported.  

‘We are waiting to get a response from Joy and her team about how she would like to handle that, and we want to defer to her on that,’ Kutler told staff about a final episode for The Reid Out. 

‘The hope is that we will have a final show with Joy.’

The Reid Out was canceled amid tanking ratings – a decision leaked early Sunday and confirmed by her bosses just hours later. 

Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart and Ayman Mohyeldin have also reportedly been given the boot from their current timeslots, the New York Post reported. 

Fellow NBCU asset NBC News further confirmed Monday that Lester Holt was also leaving his iconic Nightly News gig.

Sunday’s meeting quickly grew ‘tense and emotional’, according to Status News, after The Reid Out was dumped because of poor ratings.

During the meeting, some of the angry employees demanded answers about why the show was cancelled and what it meant for their futures at MSNBC.

Kutler insisted Donald Trump was not a factor in the decision and the network’s changes were made based on ‘data analysis and programming strategy” that she believes will “best position MNSBC for the year ahead.’

She said the show’s cancellation was part of a ‘broader slate of programming changes that will be laid out’ on Monday.

The show’s staffers reportedly expressed ‘frustration and disbelief’ that they learned of the show’s fate through media reports and not the network’s leadership.

Kutler confirmed the show’s staff has been terminated but will be paid until April and receive severance.

Reid is among MSNBC’s highest profile faces and is known for her hard left takes on social and political issues.

The show’s 7pm ET time slot will be replaced by a panel show co-hosted by Symone Sanders Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele.

Amid a looming landscape of languishing cable and legacy news stations, MSNBC had their lowest-rated January in history in the highly sought 25-54 demographic.

The statistic holds importance to advertisers due to the group’s spending power and the fact that it pertains to both daytime and primetime.

During the hours of 8-11 p.m. ET, MSNBC barely managed an audience of 734,000, with CNN securing just 522,000.

This all occurred during a hectic news cycle that featured coverage of Justin Trudeau’s resignation, Trump’s inauguration and the controversy surrounding the president’s parade of appointments and pardons.

Talking heads ranging from Jake Tapper to Joy Reid failed to stop the bleeding – as did a move from MSNBC that brought back Rachel Maddow to TV sets five times a week, at least for the first 100 days of the new administration.

MSNBC lagged to just 45,000 viewers during the day and just 63,000 during the peak hours of night – with the Maddow experiment seemingly failing.

In terms of percentages, though, the figures were even more alarming; MSNBC essentially lost nearly half of its 25-54 audience since this time last year, continuing a 65 percent slide seen since the election.

In primetime, the network’s numbers are down 41 percent from 2024. When it came to programming delivered during the day, the percentage dip was the same.

Given the timing and recent events surrounding, the new Nielsen numbers appear to show that relationship continuing in spades, with Fox seemingly set to widen that gap even more.