Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann blasted the network for axing multiple non-white anchors, referring to the cuts as a “racist purge.”
A day after news broke that Joy Reid’s show was being canceled, the network announced a complete schedule restructure, putting three other non-white anchors’ programs on the chopping block.
“Now 5 different anchors of color dismissed/cancelled,” Olbermann tweeted. “An MSNBC purge so brutally racist it makes you think it was done by Musk.”
“They didn’t even try to hide the racism by firing an unnecessary white anchor like [Katy] Tur or [Stephanie] Ruhle as cover,” the former MSNBC anchor continued. Olbermann was in a relationship with Tur when she was 23 and he was 49.
MSNBC announced Monday that two Black hosts, Michael Steele and Symone Sanders-Townsend, along with Alicia Menendez, are shifting to the 7 p.m. hour for their show The Weekend and will also host a two-hour Monday show from 7 to 9 p.m.
A network source told the Daily Beast that MSNBC is also in discussions with Eugene Daniels and Melissa Murray, who are both Black, to host weekend shows.
Olbermann, who left MSNBC in 2011, carried on ranting about the network’s decision-making on his podcast, Countdown.
“When the company is in trouble, when a dollar might not be earned, you won’t hear crap out of [Rachel] Maddow or [Lawrence] O’Donnell, or [Chris] Hayes, or [Symone] Sanders, [Michael] Steele, or [Alicia] Menendez, or Jen Psaki,” Olbermann said. “I will profusely apologize to anybody at MSNBC who stands up in defense of Joy Reid and says, ‘This stinks. This makes us white. This is contributing to the entirety of the Trump racism enveloping this country.’”
Olbermann also tweeted at several hosts to fight for Reid.
“Dear @maddow If you go on the air tonight - or at minimum go on without condemning the overt racism of the people who give you $25 million a year - you are complicit Same for you @Lawrence and @chrislhayes. Protest, or you are all Joe Scarborough."
On Monday night, Maddow took to her own show to defend Reid—who had several hosts, including Maddow, join her broadcast in an emotional tribute earlier that evening.
“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,” Maddow said on her show. “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.”
While on Reid’s show, Lawrence O’Donnell and Nicolle Wallace also said their goodbyes.
“Of course MSNBC’s firing of Joy Reid was racist,” Olbermann wrote on X. “They’ve only had four women of color host their own shows. They’ve now fired them ALL.”
