Joy Reid fired back at Stephen A. Smith’s for his remarks about her MSNBC exit, saying he unfairly criticizes Black women for the entertainment of white audiences.
Months after Smith blamed Reid’s February MSNBC firing on her ratings, Reid addressed his pattern of criticism on Naked Sports with Cari Champion.
She highlighted Smith’s recent targets—Michelle Obama, Champion, Jemele Hill, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett—and challenged him to show the same intensity toward his longtime rival, Michelle Beadle, who is white, as he does toward Black women.
“They’re paying you, not for your number, my friend.
They’re paying you because you are willing to say the nasty things about Black people that they want to say,” Reid said of Smith’s media deals. “You’re willing to take their denigration of Black women and put it in the mouth of a Negro. And because you’re willing to put the denigration of Black women in particular into a Negro’s mouth, you now think that ‘Oh, I must be a freaking political genius.’ But just be clear, you’re not being paid for your numbers, you’re being paid for what you’re willing to do to us for white people’s entertainment.”@carichampion Part 1 of 2. The conversation deserves 2 episodes. On this episode of NakedSports- @Joy Ann Reid joins me to discuss all things- her time after MSNBC. Her thoughts on where we are headed as a country. She also shares her thoughts on the #Diddy documentary! And lastly- her words for Stephen A Smith. She said what she said. @Black Effect Podcast Network ♬ original sound – championcari
On the topic of ratings, Reid said Smith has no ground to critique her numbers.
“He said I got fired for ratings,
and I’m like, ‘Excuse me, sir. You got 100 million dollars for a show with half my ratings at my worst,'” Reid quipped. “I had to literally Google his numbers. I’m like, ‘How many people listen to his show? Is it like 4 million people?’ Dude, that’s like average CNN. That’s not that high.”Reid’s remarks came weeks after he responded to popular sports radio host Dan Le Batard’s claim that Smith was being “used as a very useful tool by the right.”
“I’m very aware of what’s going on, I just don’t care as much as you do, Dan Le Batard,” Smith said on an episode
of his Sirius XM show, Straight Shooter. “I don’t care as much as other people might care because guess what, I don’t feel the way that you feel, and I don’t share your politics.”RELATED CONTENT: Stephen A. Smith Reveals Why He ‘Negotiated’ Leaving ESPN’s ‘NBA Countdown’