Rachel Maddow Stuns MSNBC Audience Live, Declares Network’s Decision to Let Joy Reid Go a ‘Disastrous Mistake’—Inside the Explosive On-Air Moment Sparking Outrage, Division, and Deepening Crisis, Leaving Viewers Questioning the Channel’s Future and Leadership Choices

Rachel Maddow is speaking out hours after it was announced that Joy Reid would be exiting MSNBC.

On Monday, Feb. 24, The Rachel Maddow Show host, 51, began her show by expressing that Reid’s departure from the network earlier the same day was “very, very, very hard to take.”

She said that throughout her career, “There is no colleague for whom I have had more affection and more respect than Joy Reid.”

“I love everything about her. I have learned so much from her. I have so much more to learn from her. I do not want to lose her as a colleague here at MSNBC,” said Maddow.

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“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,” she added while looking around the room. “But that’s what I think.”

Because Alex Wagner also lost her show amid the ongoing shakeups in television news, Maddow said it is “unnerving” that “both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend.”

While Phang will lose her show, she will stay with the network as MSNBC’s legal correspondent. Wagner is also remaining at the network as a senior political analyst.

Rotating anchors are expected to fill The ReidOut’s 7 p.m. ET slot in the coming weeks. Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez, current hosts of The Weekend, will now move to weekdays at 7 p.m. to host a new ensemble news hour. This will make Menendez the first Latina in MSNBC primetime.

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

Although Maddow told viewers that they are “not going to be disappointed,” by who fills the anchor chairs across the network, she said that “the people who get our shows on the air,” are the ones who are “really being put through the ringer,” amid more possible layoffs.

Maddow said that while her colleagues are being invited to apply for new jobs, it “has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it is not the right way to treat people, and it’s inefficient and it’s unnecessary.”

She said that “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.”

Reid’s departure occurred hours after NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt announced he would be exiting the show this summer after more than 10 years.