MSNBC's Joy Reid leaves X over Elon Musk: 'Not worth it'

WASHINGTON (TNND) — MSNBC personality Joy Reid deleted her X account Thursday, making her the latest major figure to leave the social media website.

The X profile for her MSNBC show “The ReidOut” still appears active, though the account @JoyAnnReid linked in its bio displays the error “this account doesn’t exist.” In a video, she attributed the decision to a disagreement with current ownership of the site.

“Today I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do for a while,” she said in the clip. “The reason for doing it, and kissing goodbye my 1.9 million followers, is because I haven’t been posting for a long time. I just didn’t want to be contributing content once it was purchased by its present owner.”

“Every so often I would use it to just look at news that was trending and what’s happening and I would just use it as an aggregator, but I just realized that’s not really worth it,” she added. “Because in order to do the news aggregation and just look at all, you have to wade through a lot of dreck and just abuse and a lot of negativity and it’s just not worth it.”

Reid was a vocal supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. She blamed “patriarchy” for her loss of North Carolina’s critical 16 electoral votes.

“Black voters came through for Kamala Harris, white women voters did not,” Reid said during MSNBC’s election night coverage. “This would be the second opportunity white women in this country have to change the way they interact with the patriarchy.”

Her decision follows a similar move by former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who announced his departure from the site Wednesday. Lemon also expressed concern with the site’s leadership.

“As the Washington Post recently reported on X’s decision to change terms, this ‘ensures that such lawsuits will be heard in courthouses that are a hub for conservatives, which experts say could make it easier for X to shield itself from litigation and punish critics,’” Lemon wrote. “I think that speaks for itself.”

British newspaper The Guardian also announced Wednesday it would abandon the site over what it saw as promotion of “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”

The departures follow President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to ask site owner Elon Musk to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency alongside former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. DOGE, the department’s acronym, resembles a series of online memes that later inspired the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

Follow Jackson Walker on X at @_jlwalker_ for the latest trending national news. Have a news tip? Send it to jacwalker@sbgtv.com.