Joy Reid, a former MSNBC host, accused Piers Morgan on Wednesday of ambushing her during an interview and alleged that the British media host was fixated on race baiting for his “predominantly white audience.”
On her podcast, “The Joy Reid Show,” Reid criticized Morgan after feeling displeased with her experience as a guest commentator on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” the day prior.
Prior to the contentious interview’s expected airing on Thursday afternoon, Reid preemptively accused Morgan of “luring” her onto his show under the guise of discussing her new YouTube show and current political topics.
Instead, she said, his team had compiled pre-edited clips, dredged up past controversies, and confronted her with accusations that she was a race baiter.
“The interview, which drops [Thursday], was a cheap, sleazy, very Piers Morgan pivot to take the heat off of the right and Trump and put it right where the right needs to be, on the Black lady,” Reid claimed.
Reid said she believed it was important to talk to people on the other side. But she claimed that Morgan’s team “lured” her onto the show with the idea they were going to have a fair discussion about President Donald Trump’s policies and other news, as well as her new media show. Reid shared a screenshot of an email as evidence of this.
While she said she didn’t expect Morgan to strictly stay on those topics, she also didn’t expect the host to bring up her controversial blog posts from over 15 years ago or to ask her to respond in real-time to a conservative commentator who allegedly accused her of stoking racial hatred while she was at MSNBC.
Reid viewed the interview as a racial attack.
“This was pre-planned because they had edited pieces ready for it,” she said. “He never misses an opportunity to play gotcha with Black guests on his podcast, whom he, like other right-wing podcasters, use as fodder to keep their very White audiences angry and paranoid and clicking.”
In 2017, Reid’s resurfaced blog posts from 2007-2009 containing offensive homophobic remarks and anti-gay jokes made headlines.
Reid apologized at the time, although she also claimed hackers had placed the offending remarks on her old blog but later admitted she had no evidence that happened.
“Dredging up an eight-year-old story about a 16-year-old blog post is a hell of a way to justify insanely offensive Nazi quoting things that your boy Donald Trump said and fascist actions his regime took like yesterday,” Reid reacted. “Is that what your show has come to, Piers? Dredging up old news in an effort to make yourself relevant?”
Reid claimed Morgan was “obsessed” with race and that he was forced out of his “Good Morning Britain” television gig over his “relentless, endless obsessive hatred of Megan Markle.”
“So, Piers, I did not get fired from MSNBC over ratings, but I would sure rather it be that than being separated from my show after a massive petition and viewers looked at me as a racist creep,” she said.
Her guest, Nina Turner, a former Ohio state lawmaker who co-chaired the 2020 presidential run of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was also a guest on the same episode of “Piers Morgan Uncensored.” Turner ripped the interview as a “set up.”
“It was a jump. It was a jump on a Black woman. And I agree with you. They’re the ones that are preoccupied with race,” she said of conservative media personalities.
Morgan responded to Reid’s claims on X.
“BREAKING: I interviewed Joy Reid last night. It did not go well… for Joy Reid. In fact, it went so badly for her that she’s already gone public about how terrible it was, and I am. Apparently, I’m obsessed with race & identity politics,” he said with a laughing emoji.
Morgan’s representatives referred Fox News Digital to his social media comments and said he would address the controversy on his upcoming show.
