MSNBC Fires Anti-Israel Commentator Joy Reid

MSNBC has just fired Joy Reid, who had her own news-and-opinion show at the network for four years. Reid is best known for her crazed anti-Israel and antisemitic views, including her conspiracy-theorizing about “who really was responsible for 9/11,” and her nonstop attacks on Israel for “bombing babies” in Gaza. More on her firing can be found here: “MSNBC kicks Joy Reid, other Israel critics from network,” Jerusalem Post, February 26, 2025:

Joy Reid, a controversial political commentator and news anchor, was dropped by MSNBC on Monday, ending her prime-time show ‘The ReidOut,’ according to multiple media reports.

Reid, speaking on the Win With Black Women podcast, said, “I’ve been through every emotion from anger, rage, disappointment, hurt, and a feeling of guilt that I let my team lose their jobs…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 … Where I come down on that is I’m not sorry.”

When Joy Reid refers to “little babies being bombed,” she does not have in mind the baby-killers of Hamas, whose operatives burned alive Jewish babies on October 7, 2023. Nor does she mean those members of Hamas who murdered the Bibas boys, four-year-old Ariel and nine-month-old Kfir, by strangling them in November 2023. No, she means the IDF, which she wants you to believe has deliberately, with malice aforethought, caused “little babies” to be “bombed.” Some children, including babies, have died in Gaza from Israeli strikes on buildings where Hamas was hiding both its operatives and its weapons. But such deaths are the unavoidable consequence of Hamas’ practice of embedding its operatives and its weapons in civilian areas, using Gazans as human shields. There has never been the slightest intent by the IDF to harm “little babies,” or, indeed, ay civilians. The IDF, in the hellish conditions of urban warfare, made more difficult still by Hamas embedding itself in with the civilian population, including “babies,” makes a tremendous effort, unheard of in the annals of modern warfare, to warn civilians away from sites about to be targeted. Already by March 2024, the IDF had dropped nine million leaflets, sent fifteen million text messages, and made sixteen million robocalls. No wonder John Spencer, a West Point professor of urban warfare who has studied the Gaza war, has concluded that Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history — above and beyond what international law requires.

Reid has gained notoriety over the last few years for her comments on Israel and Jews.

In 2018, the commentator apologized following resurfaced blog posts in which she claimed Israel was behind the September 11 attacks, the Washington Post reported. She had previously denied making the posts, claiming she was hacked, according to the New York Post.

She denied making those posts — there were several — accusing Israel of being behind the 9/11 attacks, claiming she had been hacked, but when other blog posts made earlier by her, making the same crazed charge about Israel being behind the 9/11 attacks, surfaced, she was then forced to admit that she had lied, though she never used that word, and so she apologized. Not that she meant it, of course, but she wanted to keep her job. The real question is this: why didn’t MSNBC fire her at that point, instead of waiting several years, during which she continued to attack the Jewish state, and Jews, with abandon? A few days after the October 7 attacks, for example, she was on the air condemning Israel for having provoked the attacks by building settlements. Reid must have thought she could make these charges without suffering any consequences, for she regarded herself as untouchable, being an African-American woman who could always scream “racism” if the network let her go, Now, at long last, MSNBC has done the right thing.

In another blog post, she was said to have reportedly agreed with a statement made by then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Jews should be forced to move from Israel to a colony in Europe.

Reid retracted both statements, claiming, “There is no question in my mind that Al Qaeda perpetrated the 9/11 attacks or about Israel’s right to its sovereignty.”…

Reid’s retractions all ring hollow. She no doubt still believes, or at least wants others to believe, that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks. And she agreed with Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that all the Jews should be expelled from Israel and forced to live in a “colony” in Europe. How likely is it that she changed her mind about any of this? Isn’t it clear her numerous retractions of antisemitic and anti-Israel statements were meant only to head off any unpleasant consequences at MSNBC’s headquarters?

And finally MSNBC decided it had had enough of Joy Reid. As Our Lady of the Lost Blogs, she’s been feeling very sorry for herself, Reid has now told the Win With Black Women podcast after her firing that “I’ve been through every emotion from anger, rage, disappointment, hurt, and a feeling of guilt that I let my team lose their jobs…” But you need not worry about Joy Reid. Such people always land on their feet. I’m sure she’ll soon have her own show again, on Al-Manar, or Al-Arabiya, or Al Jazeera.