EXCLUSIVE Civil war at MSNBC as insiders dish ugly dirt about weepy ex-host Joy Reid… and the brewing revolt against Rachel Maddow

Don’t change the channel just yet.

This is about to get good.

For the notoriously left-wing MSNBC may be descending into full-blown civil war as embattled network executives go toe-to-toe with their disgruntled on-air hosts and anchors (both current and former).

A well-placed executive inside the listing cable news Titanic is now exclusively revealing to Daily Mail that axed primetime anchor Joy Reid had it coming – and that her allegedly politically insensitive views of the Israel-Hamas war were just the tip of the iceberg.

This was the week that the mutiny inside MSNBC took on epic proportions following a decision by new network president Rebecca Kutler to fire Reid, 56, the uber-progressive host of The ReidOut, which aired in the 7 pm timeslot.

That announcement was followed by a larger personnel shakeup that saw hosts Jonathan Capehart, who is black, and Egyptian-born Ayman Mohyeldin lose their weekend programs – and cancelled Asian American host Katie Phang’s primetime show, among other moves.

The programming bloodbath did not sit well with the MSNBC’s marquee star Rachel Maddow – and she gave management both barrels during her 9 pm broadcast on Monday.

‘I think it is a bad mistake to let [Reid] walk out the door,’ Maddow said, before evoking some very difficult and uncomfortable issues of race.

A well-placed executive inside the listing cable news Titanic is now exclusively revealing to Daily Mail that axed primetime anchor Joy Reid (pictured) had it coming – and that her allegedly politically insensitive views of the Israel-Hamas war were just the tip of the iceberg

This was the week that the mutiny inside MSNBC took on epic proportions following a decision by new network president Rebecca Kutler (pictured) to fire Reid, 56, the uber-progressive host of The ReidOut, which aired in the 7 pm timeslot

The programming bloodbath did not sit well with the MSNBC’s marquee star Rachel Maddow (pictured) – and she gave management both barrels during her 9 pm broadcast on Monday

It was ‘unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two—count ’em, two—nonwhite hosts in primetime [Reid and Phang], both of our nonwhite hosts in primetime are losing their shows… That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it,’ she said.

Maddow’s blistering public criticism then appeared to take direct aim at Kutler and her strategy to reverse the network’s historically bad ratings.

‘We want to grow and succeed and reach more people than ever,’ Maddow said. ‘[But] I also 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.’

Maddow’s plea appeared to have little effect.

By Wednesday, MSNBC reportedly rolled out plans to slash 125 production jobs, including many positions on Maddow’s own show staff. (The laid-off employees will reportedly be invited to reapply for about 110 new jobs.)

Now Daily Mail’s source inside the network said that Maddow also expressed her views privately and directly to management.

And for their parts, Reid and Phang, also twisted the identity-politics knife while lamenting their situations.

‘I was proud to platform more AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) voices than any other cable show ever,’ Phang wrote in a pointed post to Instagram. ‘Representation matters,’ she concluded.

‘I went hard on so many issues,’ complained Reid, who wept through her remarks on a Zoom call to supporters, ‘whether it was the Black Lives Matter, issues of a young baby or a mom or dad that was killed or when we opened up people’s eyes to the fact that Asian Americans were being targeted, and not just Black folks.’

‘My show had value,’ she insisted.

Apparently not enough ‘value’ for the execs at MSNBC, who are shutting down broadcast operations in the Miami, where Phang had filmed her show, as the network corporate owner Comcast prepares to spin off most of its cable networks into a separate publicly traded company by November.

Amid the change, MSNBC will consolidate production operations to New York and Washington, DC. Phang will stay on at MSNBC as a legal correspondent. Capehart and Mohyeldin will also fill different roles.

That announcement was followed by a larger personnel shakeup that saw hosts Jonathan Capehart (left) and Egyptian-born Ayman Mohyeldin (right) lose their weekend programs

Asian American host Katie Phang’s primetime show (pictured) was also cancelled

But this is not the case for Reid, who gave her final broadcast Monday, hours after the network confirmed that she was being ousted.

It’s been widely noted these raced-based critiques of the programming shakeup have been damaging to the network, especially as MSNBC has made progressivism it’s brand. And they are particulary unhelpful for Kutler who replaced ex-MSNBC president Rashida Jones, the first black woman to ever run a major TV news operation.

In an apparent pushback against this criticism, the MSNBC insider claimed that Reid should have seen the writing on the wall for months.

The Mail was told that MSNBC renegotiated Reid’s contract several months ago, before the 2024 election, allegedly signing her to a single-year contract. In contrast, Maddow also re-signed in 2024, but for an additional five years.

‘[Reid] should have been totally unsurprised by her firing,’ the source said.

MSNBC denied to provide a statement on this when reached for comment.

Additionally, the executive claimed that Reid’s vocal stance on the Israel-Hamas war was problematic inside the network. They cited Reid’s ‘very intense’ conference calls with show staff that left the impression that she had sympathy for the impact of the war on the Gazan people but little for Israelis.

Again, MSNBC had nothing to say on-the-record about these claims.

Indeed, Reid herself suggested that she lost her job, in part, because of her pro-Palestinian advocacy.

‘We as the American people have a right to object to little babies being bombed,’ she said of the Israel-Hamas war on her post-firing call with fans. ‘I am not sorry that I stood up for those things, because those things are of God.’

Whatever the truth of Reid’s termination, one thing is certain – something had to change at MSNBC. The ratings are in the toilet.

The ReidOut premiered on July 20, 2020 raking in nearly 3 million viewers per episode on average during its first year on the air. By February 20, the number of total average nightly viewers hit 778,000.

As for the network, the picture has gone from bad to worse. In February 2021, MSNBC averaged a total of 1.4 million total viewers every hour throughout the entire day and an average of 2.9 million total viewers duringonly primetime hours.

Today, those numbers are down to just 613,000 and 1 million total viewers, respectively – a more than 50 percent decline on both ends.

‘This is an issue that is bigger than Joy Reid,’ media journalist Steve Krakauer told The Mail. ‘People felt lied to in 2024 with the big bait and switch with Biden for Harris. MSNBC talked up Harris nonstop.

‘But [Reid] was someone who has been a point of contention to her higher ups,’ he observed. ‘They have wanted to saw off the Joy Reid problem for years now… This was an opportunity with a new president to show her the door and get a new start.’

On Wednesday, there was one more apparent broadside launched from inside the network at the insurrectionists.

Dylan Byers at Puck News reported that several of Maddow’s colleagues are struck by the irony of her moanings over cost-cutting moves by the network brass. Maddow reportedly receives an annual salary of $25 million (reduced from $30 million in her recent re-signing), which Byers points out is the roughly equivalent to the combined salary of about 125 production staffers.

In an age of declining cable news ratings and falling TV advertising revenues is that ‘indefensible’, too?