MSNBC Hosts Gather for Love Fest on Joy Reid’s Final Show

On her final show on MSNBC Joy Reid was joined by some of her fellow liberal hosts for a love fest to heap praise on her final show.

Rachel Maddow started the love fest;

Well, first I want to say that I love you, Joy, and that I am bereft that The ReidOut is ending. I really I just can’t even I sort of can’t get beyond that. So I want to say that. But that is also part of what I think I have to say to the country about this moment, which is find people who you respect and trust and love and make common cause with them and help, you know, help yourself by learning from them and help them by standing up for them. And I think we have tried to do that.

And I think that in important ways we have failed. But I think it’s still the right thing to try to do. And so whether that means, you know, joining something locally or whether that means making some sort of more unofficial common cause with the people in your life where you respect them, who you think are people you can depend on. Like I feel about you, you got to join forces with we can none of this. None of us can do this alone.

Nicole Wallace then followed by saying that she felt she had “lost a limb” and was wallowing in despair:

And I think that my reaction to the end of The ReidOut and your departure is despair. And the only thing that chips away at that for me, is that despair is the autocrat’s tool. It’s their most effective weapon. It costs nothing. It’s easy to deploy, it’s contagious. And then it puts in motion all the actions they want. Hopelessness. Isolation. Exasperation. Giving up. And so the only reason I will not wallow in what I feel about you leaving is, is because I think that’s what they want.

Finally, Lawrence O’Donnell said he would skip the love fest since he had already addressed that a few days ago and chose to read a passage from Reid’s book to discuss the civil rights movement in America.

For her part, Reid went out swinging when she began her show with a message that was very much directed at President Trump and his allies:

“We begin tonight with what I think is the question when you are in the midst of a crisis, and specifically a crisis of democracy: How do you resist when fascism isn’t just coming, it’s already here?” Reid said. “What, if anything, can you do about it? For one thing, you can try to learn from history, from what people in this situation, in countries around the world and in America, have done before. As my friend Rachel Maddow always says, History is here to help.”

“The first rule is to fight back, to never stop resisting. Do not obey in advance, as [anti-Trump historian] Tim Snyder put it… Even if it’s scary or uncomfortable or inconvenient, just keep saying no. Or finding creative ways to say no in small ways and large,” she added.

She could have left on a classy note but that’s not her style and only vindicated MSNBC’s decision to part ways with her in the Trump 2.0 era