Ex-MSNBC Anchor Tells All About Her Firing

Journalist Tiffany Cross does not seem to be holding back when it comes to her firing from MSNBC. The former host did not avoid any questions and spoke bluntly on the latest episode of the Native Land Pod podcast. Cross said that she believes she was fired to appease conservative viewers.

Cross is co-hosting Native Land Pod with Angela Rye and Andrew Gillum, and it seems nothing is off limits. Cross hosted her own political analysis show on MSNBC from 2020 to 2022 titled The Cross Connection, airing on Saturday mornings. The show was canceled in the fall of 2022 and Cross said that she was told very little from the network at the time. On the latest episode of the podcast, she said: "I was never given an official reason for why they canceled my show, but it was pretty obvious that I had drawn the ire of white conservatives."

Cross did not beat around the bush about her experience at MSNBC, saying that her troubles began long before she had her own show. She believes that she made a powerful enemy when she disagreed with Joe Scarborough on the air. She was a guest on Morning Joe when she challenged Scarborough's assertions about the history of racism in the Republican party. After that, she believes that Scarborough complained about her to executives and even tried to block her from getting a promotion.

"There's an unspoken rule that you're not supposed to disagree with Joe, and I didn't get that memo," Cross said. "I was told by several reputable sources, including a talent agent, two anchors, and another executive at the network, that he left set and went into... the president of the network's office to complain about my segment, to complain that I disagreed with him, said that I called him racist and suggested that I should not be Joy Reid's successor to get the show."

While Cross still got her own show in 2020, she said that she met an unusual amount of pushback from the network from the start. She said: "Every single week from the start of my show to the very last show I did, it was a battle. It was a battle to cover things that I wanted to talk about. When I would fight these battles, I know y'all know exactly what I mean; I was spoken to in the most condescending ways. I had my intelligence questioned."

Still, Cross said that she believes the real reason her show was canceled was because of attacks from conservative commentators outside of the network. She recalled an instance where Tucker Carlson accused her of trying to start a race war on the air, and MSNBC said nothing in response "After this the network did not issue a statement the way they had for some of my white colleagues who had also been targeted by MAGA extremists," she said. "Instead executives spoke to me and instructed me that I could not respond to Tucker Carlson at all, and then they began to scrutinize my show every little thing I wrote."

Cross acknowledged that a radio interview with Charlamagne Tha God contributed to her termination as well – at the time she referred to Florida as the "dick" of the country. She said: "After that show...I got a call from the president of the network saying that they would not be renewing my contract, which was up in a month, and that my viewers would not even be given the courtesy or the respect of me being able to sign off or have a final show."

Cross believes that this was designed to send a message. She said: "So it was all very intentional. The firing was abrupt and it was also very intentional to my audience to my viewers, that you are not the kind of viewers that the company cares about. I was devastated." Still, Cross said that she doesn't regret the way she used her platform while she had it. She said: "For me, what was the point in having this platform if I'm going to show up and spit out some vanilla granola boringness and hope that one day the white man lets me host the Today show."