Joy Reid devoted her final MSNBC show Monday to offering her viewers guidance on resistance, or how to respond to Donald Trump’s moves to consolidate power in his second term.
Reid opened the show by posing a question at the top of the hour. “When you are in the midst of a crisis, and specifically a crisis of democracy, how do you resist? When fascism isn’t just coming, it’s already here.”
Earlier today, MSNBC announced its was canceling The ReidOut as part of a schedule overhaul, and that Reid would be departing the network.
Fellow MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace and Lawrence O’Donnell joined Reid to offer their take on the resistance, as well as to offer some farewell messages.
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“I am bereft that The ReidOut is ending,” Maddow said. “I sort of can’t get beyond that. But that is also part of what I have to say to the country about this moment, which is find people who you respect and trust and love and make common cause with them and help yourself by learning from them, and help them by standing up for them.”
After news broke on Sunday that Reid’s show would be canceled, Trump went on a social media tirade, blasting Reid as a “mentally obnoxious racist.” That type of reaction from Trump, though, revealed how much Reid pushed his buttons, as well as others on the right.
The network has received pushback among a number of prominent progressives for her show’s cancellation.
Reid said in an emergency Win With Black Women call on Sunday that she has been through “every emotion, from anger, rage, disappointment, hurt, feeling guilt that I let my team lose their jobs. But in the end, where I really land, and where I have landed on today is just gratitude.” She said that “my show had value, and what I was doing had value.” She said that she was not sorry for presenting hard-hitting views on a range of issues, including talking about Donald Trump’s assault on the Constitution and “talking about Gaza and the fact that the American people have a right to object to little babies being bombed.”
“I am not sorry that I stood up for those things because those things are of God.”
Reid launched her 7 p.m. ET show in 2020, when it replaced Chris Matthews’ nightly program. The show drew about 817,000 total viewers in January. That’s slightly below the 822,000 average for the show that follows it, All in with Chris Hayes, and a drop from the 892,000 for the show preceding it, The Beat with Ari Melber. But The ReidOut did beat CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront, which averaged 584,000. ReidOut trailed Burnett’s show in the 25-54 demo, though, averaging 74,000 to CNN’s 120,000, according to Nielsen.
The network is replacing the show with one hosted by Alicia Menendez, Symone Sanders Townsend and Michael Steele, who currently anchor the Saturday and Sunday show The Weekend. The network has emphasized that its schedule overhaul is a continuation of its progressive bent, particularly in primetime.
Reid closed out her show by thanking each member of her production staff individually, while vowing, “We are not going to stop.”