The mainstream media is in big trouble. They haven’t been able to cope with the fact that Trump is president again.
And this Leftist news network is in the midst of a disastrous collapse that there’s no escaping from.
Rachel Maddow Faces Staff Cuts as MSNBC Shuffles Its Deck
MSNBC heavyweight Rachel Maddow is bracing for a significant shakeup, with Fox News Digital confirming that a chunk of her team will be axed as part of the network’s latest production trims.
Come April, after wrapping up her five-nights-a-week gig covering President Donald Trump’s initial 100 days in office, Maddow’s squad is set to shrink. The Rachel Maddow Show will dial back to its Monday-only rhythm—a deal the network’s top dog reportedly locked in, despite her hefty paycheck.
The fallout hits beyond just Maddow’s circle. Many of the staffers facing the chop also chipped in on The Alex Wagner Show, a program that’s now history after filling Maddow’s 9 p.m. ET slot from Tuesday to Friday. With that show gone, Inside with Jen Psaki is stepping into the spotlight as part of MSNBC’s refreshed lineup, leaving the shared Maddow-Wagner crew out in the cold.
Not everyone’s getting the boot, though — Maddow’s most seasoned producers are safe, and those on the chopping block have been tossed a lifeline: the chance to reapply for other gigs at MSNBC.
The network’s playing it cool, insisting this isn’t a mass purge but rather a strategic shift to fuel new projects and priorities.
Maddow didn’t mince words on her Monday broadcast, laying bare the toll these changes might take on her show while slamming MSNBC’s handling of its people. “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,” she told her audience.
She didn’t stop there, calling it a messy, unprecedented move. “That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming 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,” she said.
The uncertainty, she added, is “off the charts” for a team already stretched thin by a demanding job.
Few at MSNBC enjoy Maddow’s ironclad stability — she’s said to have secured a jaw-dropping $25 million salary in last year’s negotiations.
That security gave her the footing to throw her weight behind ex-colleague Joy Reid, whose show “The ReidOut” also got the axe.
“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,” Maddow declared.
She wasn’t shy about her feelings: “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.”
Maddow also raised an eyebrow at MSNBC’s decision to pull the plug on shows hosted by “two non-White hosts” — Reid and Wagner — along with The Katie Phang Show on weekends.
“And that feels worse than bad, no matter who replaces them,” she said. “That feels indefensible, and I do not defend it.”
She acknowledged Wagner’s next chapter as a political analyst but skipped over the fact that Reid’s slot is being handed to Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez — a trio with two Black hosts and one Latina, already co-hosting a weekend show together. Phang, meanwhile, stays on as a legal correspondent.
MSNBC is dangling new roles for affected staffers before they hit the open market. The cuts arrive amid a brutal stretch for the news biz, with CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post all trimming their ranks recently, too. For Maddow and her team, the road ahead looks rocky.
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