On-air reactions to recent programming changes continue to reveal the ongoing institutional rot at MSNBC. As part of a network-wide prime time meltdown, star anchor Rachel Maddow openly blasted the programming changes that led to the cancellation of multiple programs in addition to Joy Reid’s. 

Here is Rachel Maddow’s rant in its entirety (click “expand” to view transcript):

Rachel Maddow RAKES MSNBC on-air over programming changes pic.twitter.com/Q0wQ1nMbpy

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) February 25, 2025

RACHEL MADDOW: All right. I'm going to take a little point of personal privilege here, just for a moment, if it is okay with you. You may have already heard about changes that have been announced at MSNBC over the last couple of days. The new president of our network made it official today. Some of our shows are moving to different time slots or expanding or going away altogether. In primetime, just so you know, I am here five days a week for the first 100 days of Trump's presidency, as planned. And as planned, I will go back to just Mondays after that. That is not changing. What is changing is that the show Alex Wagner Tonight is not coming back at nine after the first 100 days. Instead, Alex will be a senior political analyst for MSNBC, and Jen Psaki will start hosting the 9 P.M. hour all the other nights except for Mondays. So that's a big change. An even bigger programming change is at 7 P.M. 7 P.M. Eastern, where Joy Reid's show The ReidOut ended tonight, and Joy is not taking a different job in the network. She is leaving the network altogether and that is 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. 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, 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. I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count ‘em, two nonwhite hosts in primetime, both of our nonwhite hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it. But there's just one other piece of it that you should know. From your side of the TV screen you will- you will mostly see changes in terms of who's in the anchor chair, and actually everybody's who's going to be in anchor chairs from here on out are great colleagues and great at what they do. And you are not going to be disappointed in who's on our air and what you're going to be seeing. But one thing you cannot necessarily see is that the people who get our shows on the air, they're really being put through the ringer. 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. That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programing 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. 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 discombu- discombobulation is off the charts, at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult. 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 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. We welcome new voices to this place and some familiar voices to new hours. It's going to be great, honestly. And we want to grow and succeed and reach more people than ever and be resilient and stay here forever. I also believe, and I bet you believe, that the way to get there is by treating people well, finding good people, good colleagues, doing good work with them, and then having their back. That, we could do a lot better on. A lot better.

This rant was part of an ongoing primetime struggle session wherein the hosts took turns eulogizing Joy Reid, whose incendiary tenure as an MSNBC host ended (perhaps for now) on Monday. But it should be noted that this isn’t the first time that MSNBC hosts take to the air to opine about personnel decisions. 

Recall the outrage, fueled by MSNBC, when former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel was hired, then unhired as an NBC commentator. Note what Maddow said at the time, when the internal revolt successfully reversed the hiring of a hated outsider:

MADDOW: I still feel like a little -- it always feels wrong to talk about things, you know, in the company as if it's news. 

Maddow expressed no such qualms, however, when the firings happened within the liberal clique. She had quite a bit to say, actually. First, she called the firings of Joy Reid, Katie Phang, and others “a bad mistake”.

Maddow then proceeded to impute racial animus to the cancellations of Reid and Wagner’s shows:

MADDOW: I will tell you, it is also unnerving to see that on a network where we've got two, count ‘em, two nonwhite hosts in primetime, both of our nonwhite hosts in primetime are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them. That feels indefensible. And I do not defend it.

Never mind that Reid’s show is rumored to be replaced by a weeknight version of The Weekend, featuring Michael Steele, Symone Sanders-Townsend and Alicia Menéndez. Reid might be gone, but her toxic brand of racial arson remains alive and well at MSNBC.

After interceding for production staff, Maddow proceeds to end her diatribe by chiding the network to “do a lot better”. It is here that we stop and consider the madness of allowing the inmates to continue to run the asylum. Allowing talent to spike the ball after the ouster of McDaniel effectively created the permission structure for them to think themselves entitled to openly weigh in on personnel decisions.

Ultimately, networks are businesses, and MSNBC is entitled to assess whether or not retaining their talents is what’s best for business. In the case of Reid (and Mohyeldin, and Capehart, and Phang, as well as Wagner and Díaz-Balart on weekdays), the network decided that it was best to move on. 

This same rationale is what compelled MSNBC to retain Maddow’s part-time services for $25 million a year. They may one day decide that these monies are best spent elsewhere- perhaps on more diverse talent, per Maddow’s hypocritical protestations. If Maddow is so outraged by the lack of diversity at MSNBC, why not step aside and redistribute that timeslot (and salary) to more deserving talents of color, instead of protesting its bequeathing to melanin-deficient Obama/Biden apparatchik Jen Psaki? 

Having just settled a defamation lawsuit over the malicious “uterus collector” defamation of a Georgia doctor, MSNBC may also decide that the remaining anchor slate is a liability and move on from them, as well- Maddow included. So long as Maddow is the public face and de facto titular head of the network, these entitled meltdowns will continue.