Rachel Maddow blasts MSNBC for axing Joy Reid, calls out network's treatment of staffers in stunning rebuke

Rachel Maddow offered a stunning rebuke to MSNBC over its decision to pull her colleague Joy Reid from its programming and how it is treating staffers who potentially face layoffs. 

Maddow took a moment on Monday night to address the "changes" being announced at MSNBC, reminding her viewers that "The Rachel Maddow Show" will revert to only Mondays at the conclusion of President Trump's first 100 days in office, but not all of her primetime colleagues will remain a result of programming overhaul.

She specifically called the cancelation of "The ReidOut" in the 7 p.m. ET timeslot and Reid's exit from the network "very, very, very hard to take."

"I am 51 years old. I have been gainfully employed since I was 12. And I have had so many different kinds of jobs, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But in all of the jobs I have had, in all of the years I have been alive, there is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid," Maddow said. 

"I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her," she continued. "I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC, and personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door. It is not my call, and I understand that, but that's what I think." 

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Maddow went on to call it "unnerving" for the network to cancel the shows of "two non-White hosts" in its weekday programming as well as "The Katie Phang Show" on the weekends, noting that "The Alex Wagner Show" will no longer fill in Maddow's 9 p.m. ET timeslot for the remainder of the week, which is instead going to "Inside with Jen Psaki." 

"And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them," Maddow said. "That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it."

While Maddow noted that Wagner will remain with the network as a political analyst, she did not mention that Reid's timeslot is being filled by Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez, two of whom are Black and one is Latina, all currently co-host a weekend program together. Phang, too, is also remaining with the network as a legal correspondent. 

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Very few at MSNBC have the job security of Maddow, who allegedly negotiated a whopping $25 million salary last year. But she went to bat for network staffers who she said were "really being put through the wringer."

"Dozens of producers and staffers, including some who are among the most experienced and most talented and most specialist producers in the building, are facing being laid off, they're being invited to reapply for new jobs," Maddow said. 

"That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it's not the right way to treat people, and it's inefficient and it's unnecessary, and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work and so we don't generally do things that way," she added. 

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"Maybe all of our folks, including most of the people who are getting this very show on the air right now, maybe they will all get new jobs here, and I hope they do, but in the meantime, being put in this kind of limbo, the anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult," Maddow continued. 

"It is not news for me to tell you that the press and freedom of the press are under attack in a way that is really – it's a big deal for our country. It's very visceral for us here. I know that the business of the press is not an easy thing, and I know that no job is forever, but I think I'm safe in saying for all of us anchors who you know through the TV, please know that what pains us the most is not what happens to us. It is what happens to our coworkers on whom we depend, and who you don't necessarily know, but we respect and love them, and depend on them, and did I mention we respect them?"

"This is a difficult time in the news business, but it does not need to be this difficult… Finding good people, good colleagues, doing good work with them and then having their back. That we can do a lot better on. A lot better," Maddow added. 

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Maddow, perhaps emboldened by the fact her viewership trounces her MSNBC colleagues, has a history of taking defiant stances against her own employer. Last year, Maddow offered the most scathing response to NBC's decision to hire former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, which was quickly reversed following the chorus of on-air backlash. 

She also took NBC to task in 2019 over its cover-up of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and how it forced its own journalist at the time, Ronan Farrow, to publish his 2017 bombshell reporting with The New Yorker, even booking him on her program to discuss his story.

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MSNBC's future remains unclear as its parent company, NBCUniversal, is set to spin off the network and a slew of other sister channels to be its own standalone entity later this year. Meanwhile, its ratings have been in sharp decline and its programming has undergone drastic changes without juicing viewership.