MSNBC host Joy Reid is under fire for shockingly bigoted posts that appeared on her now-defunct blog under her byline. Reid has claimed that hackers conspired to make her appear homophobic, telling Mediaite on Monday that a trove of anti-LGBT posts on her old blog were "fabricated" by nefarious actors who want to "taint her character."
Reid apologized last December for a series of homophobic posts that were unearthed by Twitter user @Jamie_Maz from her website The Reid Report, explaining that her views on LGBT issues had changed over the years. The offending posts were written between 2007 and 2009. But last week, Maz reported finding several more anti-gay posts using the Wayback Machine, which pulls archives of old internet content even if it's been deleted. While Reid has taken her old blog off of the internet, Maz was able to find posts that included references to finding gay sex "gross," suggestions that gay men are prone to pedophilia, and lists of people in politics and media who Reid joked or suggested were gay.
Reid denied writing the posts, telling Mediaite that "an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material" from her old blog "to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology." Reid said she notified law enforcement officials of the activity.
But the Wayback Machine did not find any evidence of hacking, the site explained in a blog post Tuesday, after conducting a review at the request of Reid's lawyers in December. Read more at Mediaite.