Rachel Maddow says MSNBC laying off ‘non-white’ hosts and staff is ‘indefensible’

Majority of producers on Maddow and Joy Reid’s shows let go with option to re-apply amid network shake-up

MSNBC has told the majority of the employees who produce Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid’s primetime evening news shows they are being let go as part of the network’s programming overhaul with the option to apply for new roles, according to two people directly familiar with the matter.

Maddow, the biggest star and highest-rated anchor at MSNBC, will get to keep her executive producer, Cory Gnazzo, and several other senior producers, the people said.

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Rachel Maddow on her critics: ‘Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on! Give me more!’

The MSNBC host’s show has become a safety blanket for many US progressives. She discusses her demonisation by the right, tackling the president’s lies – and coming out at 17

Rachel Maddow, the US TV host, has a message for her critics: “Bring it. Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on. Give me more. Give me more. I love it!”

That is just as well, given the way she has polarised viewers in the past few years. Maddow, 46, has presented her primetime show on MSNBC, a 24-hour cable news channel, on weeknights since 2008. If most cable news and social media is fast food, she tries to rustle up a three-course meal: sensible, sober, sometimes painfully detailed and replete with oblique references to half-forgotten politicians of yesteryear. Since Donald Trump’s rise in 2016, however, The Rachel Maddow Show has become a nightly safety blanket for many progressives who identify with the “resistance”.

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