MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid has apologized for her homophobic blog posts from the mid-2000s that were recently uncovered, using her Saturday morning show to take ownership of the comments she made.
“I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things,” she said. “But I can definitely understand, based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past, why some people don’t believe me.”
She continued: “I’ve not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for – I own that, I get it. And for that, I’m truly sorry.”
The host of MSNBC’s “AM Joy” has been under fire in recent days for newly uncovered blog posts from her former blog, the “Reid Report”. The homophobic posts made derogatory remarks about gay people.
In one post, for example, she wrote that “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing.”
“Adult gay men tend to be attracted to very young, post-pubescent types,” she wrote in another.
The story picked up steam when Reid denied that she had written those words, claiming that the posts were the work of hackers and “part of an effort to taint my character with false information by distorting a blog that ended a decade ago,” she said in a statement to Mediate. The FBI had even stepped in to investigate her claims, Reid’s lawyer announced on Wednesday.
But many have pointed out the unlikelihood of her hacking claims. The Daily Beast temporarily suspended Reid’s column while the publication’s reporters pursued their own investigation. Their results found that her hacking claims crumble “under scrutiny.”
“When a friend found them in December and sent them to me, I was stunned,” Reid said of the posts. “Frankly, I couldn’t imagine where they’d come from or whose voice this was. The reality is they have not been able to prove it.”
“I’m heartbroken that I didn’t do better back then,” Reid added. “The reality is I have to own the things I’ve written and tweeted and said.”