Drain MSNBC of Viewers As It Whitewashes its Network to Placate Trump

Under the leadership of Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC has decided to silence, sideline, and cancel prominent anchors of color, such as Joy Reid. The rest of us can tune out and build our own media community.

To allegedly court progressive voters, MSNBC, under the leadership of new President Rebecca Kutler, has decided to purge its network of progressive anchors and hosts of color.

Read that sentence again.

Over the weekend, host Joy Reid and her entire team were informed that their show was canceled after the news had already been leaked to outlets. To maintain plausible deniability, the reasoning was due to “ratings” but, shockingly, other hosts who are performing poorly, such as Katy Tur, Ari Melber, and Stephanie Ruhle were untouched. Earlier today, it was announced that shows hosted by Ayman Mohyeldin, Katie Phang, and Jonathan Capehart were also canceled although they would still be on the network with different roles. Alex Wagner also lost her hosting duties. What do they all share in common, folks? Yup - all people of color.

MSNBC continues its shameful streak of throwing Black women under the bus. Joy Reid now joins Tiffany Cross, Zerlina Maxwell, Tamron Hall, and Melissa Harris Perry done wrong by the alleged network courting liberal viewers by erasing the most loyal base of the Democratic party: Black women. Lester Holt also announced he was stepping down as anchor of NBC Nightly News in the early Summer.

Happy Black History Month, America.

Meanwhile, the Morning Joe team which voluntarily flew down to Mar-a-Lago to bend the knee to Donald Trump and antagonizes its viewers will maintain its plum morning show and position. Reid’s show will be replaced by a new show consisting of Michael Steele, the former head of the RNC, Symone Sanders, former counsel to Kamala Harris, and Alicia Menendez. All three of them are currently relegated to the “Dead zone” of weekend programming, which is where MSNBC dumps most of its talent of color. That was when Ali Velshi, who as of now still has his show, Capehart, and Ayman also aired their shows. Jen Psaki, former WH Press Secretary for President Biden, is being elevated to a nightly primetime show.

All the establishment Democratic voices are safe, for now, but anyone who bucked the trend, on say the Gaza war, or called out Trump’s authoritarian cruelty with the necessary bluntness it deserves is getting sidelined, silenced, or kicked out. The same thing happened to Mehdi Hasan last year. The network’s best interviewer faced a vicious and ugly smear campaign for his pro-Palestinian coverage and also lost his show. (He has since rebounded spectacularly at Zeteo.)

Cable News somehow always finds the money for right-wing trolls, such as Scott Jennings at CNN or Ronna Romney McDaniel, former RNC chair, who was initially offered a lucrative $300K/year contract at NBC News before public outrage forced the network to back off. If you promote conspiracy theories and mock the network as Trump’s propagandist, then you can make bank. However, legal analyst Elie Mystal, a Black man, keeps being told MSNBC has no money to pay him for his brilliant commentary. NBC News was perfectly fine booting a show co-hosted by two Black anchors, Tamron Hall and Al Roker, to make room for Megyn Kelly, who received a historic contract of $69 million for a failed show that didn’t even last a year. She left with all that money and proceeded to rejoin MAGA and double down on all the toxic hate and ugliness, even re-friending Trump, the man who attacked her with the vilest, cruelest misogyny. She now calls him “a protector of women.”

After all this, MAGA still sees MSNBC, and any news outlet that doesn’t kiss Trump’s ring, as “the enemy of the people.” To quote The Bourne Identity, “Look what they make you give?” Was it worth it? Of course not. Meanwhile, MAGA conspiracy theorist and podcast host Dan Bongino is our new Deputy Director of the FBI, and former Fox host Pete Hegseth is our Secretary of Defense. They will use their incredibly powerful positions to erode our democratic freedoms and punish all critics of the Trump agenda. Over the weekend, Trump dismissed Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the abundantly overqualified chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth said the Four-Star General was “not the right man for the moment.” Apparently, he doesn’t have a troubling history of sexual abuse allegations, alcoholism, financial impropriety, and white skin like Hegseth, which would make him a Trump affirmative action hire.

As Trump and MAGA cynically attack people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ communities under the guise of eradicating “DEI” and “wokeness,” it’s shameful but unfortunately all too predictable that so many corporations are active accomplices due to cowardice and concern for their bottom line.

However, karma also plays FAFO.

Unlike the past, none of us are going back. We’re not going to stay silent. We aren’t going to wait for permission to speak. We’re not going to tap dance and entertain for scraps. We’re not going to be docile paupers with our hands outstretched begging for opportunities. The rest of us, the majority, who acknowledge the threat of fascism will unite and join in a growing, multicultural community that will move forward by lifting each other up.

Tonight is Joy Reid’s final show on MSNBC. I recommend you tune in and then tune out of any corporations and media outlets that are failing our democracy and people of color as our very lives and freedoms are being attacked by a right-wing authoritarian movement dedicated to making white supremacy great again.

They don’t want us? Fine.

We don’t need them. We’ll build our own.

On this episode of Democracy-ish, Danielle and I spill some tea and personal stories about how cable news really works. Give us a watch.