Joy Reid and Piers Morgan have launched preemptive strikes ahead of the release of a seemingly combative interview set to air on YouTube.

The former ReidOut star took to her YouTube show first to express regret and frustration.

She mentioned that her public relations team suggested the interview, and then she shared screenshots from Morgan’s PR team showing that the discussion was supposed to include topics like Donald Trump, deportations, and her termination from MSNBC.

‘Now, why did I go along with such an idea?’ Reid, 56, asked during the late night live stream.

‘Well, sometimes you do want to actually talk to people on the right, and see if they’ve got anything interesting to say.’

Admitting that conservative commentators such as Tucker Carlson have been surprisingly sensible lately, Reid expressed feeling ‘ambushed’ by questions focusing on race during the interview.

Just hours later, Morgan, 60, shared his perspective on the yet-to-be-aired conversation, hinting on X that the encounter “did not go well… for Joy Reid.”

Referencing how Reid had ‘already gone public about how terrible it was and [he] was, Morgan said: ‘Drops later on @PiersUncensored.’

‘Apparently, I’m obsessed with race & identity politics,’ he added.

Reid, meanwhile, devoted several minutes of her newly launched Joy Reid Show to the sit-down, which will air at 3pm ET Thursday on Piers Morgan Uncensored. 

‘Let me actually start just by reminding myself just how thirsty Piers Morgan is,’ she said to start the stream. ‘And you’ll be forgiven for not knowing who Piers Morgan is.’

Offering a quick backstory on the British journalist that billed him as unimpressive and ‘a rather thirsty little troll,’ Reid claimed Morgan was’ desperate it seems for attention.’

‘I figured, okay, wouldn’t be my first choice, but why not?’ she said separately. 

‘And here on the screen, I want to put up the email that Piers’ team sent to my PR agency to get me to come on the show.’

A subsequent screenshot showed Morgan’s team telling Reid’s representation about the conversation that had then yet to occur, on Tuesday at 10:19am.

A rep wrote how Reid should expect ‘a free flowing conversation covering several topics in [her] wheelhouse, including the Trump administration, Elon Musk establishing a new political party, ICE raids, and news of the day.’

The representative also asked to discuss Reid ‘leaving MSNBC’ and ‘her new online venture.’

‘Okay, sounds compelling. But it turns out that is not what the interview was about,’ Reid raged. 

‘Instead, Piers used a 45-minute interview to ambush me mainly about his favorite subject, race – specifically why black people like me talk so much about race, especially when it comes to Donald Trump.’

She revealed: ‘Specifically, Piers demanded to know why I don’t call the black  president a fascist for deporting more brown people than Trump has.’

Reid added how Morgan also quizzed her about a recent interview appearance where she discussed ‘being black at MSNBC’ with CUNY professor Mark Lamont Hill.

Reid, during that sit-down, claimed ‘white fragility shaped newsroom decisions’ and that she received backlash from bosses for simply liking posts about Palestinian children.

She also claimed MSNBC staff herself were ‘blindsided’ by February’s firings from then-new boss Rebecca Kutler, even though a high-level MSNBC source told Daily Mail in March that Reid was likely well aware she was on the chopping block due to backlash over her Palestine comments and a paltry one-year contract extension.

Reid also claimed ‘black and brown journalists’ at the network were ‘purged.’

At 10:31am Thursday, Morgan posted a series of heated snippets of the interview as a sort of preview of what’s to come.

‘Do you think school children at school should have access to books in their library which involves traps on dildos?’ Morgan asks at a point, leaving Reid momentarily speechless.

‘If the person is brown, they need to be rounded up and put into quote-unquote “Alligator Alcatraz,” a concentration camp in Florida,’ Reid rages in another clip, adding, ‘If the person is white, we let them start a business and become Elon Musk. 

‘Do you know how many people Barack Obama deported in eight years?’ Morgan asks in another exchange.

‘I don’t know, and I don’t care,’ answers Reid.

‘You don’t know, and you don’t care? The majority were brown,’ says Morgan.

Reid, in response, calls Morgan’s comments ‘an absolutely disingenuous argument. 

‘Because this is your shtick.’

A shouting match ensues after Morgan hurled the same accusation back at Reid, before asking her whether she ever watched the movie ‘Brokeback Mountain.’

After Reid replied ‘No,’ Morgan points to past posts from the progressive where she said she wouldn’t watch the film because she did ‘not want to see two male characters having sex.’ 

‘Your words not mine,’ Morgan says.

Reid’s answer remains unclear, but in a clip played immediately after, she is heard telling Morgan: ‘And your point is?’

Reid’s blog posts before becoming famous first spawned controversy in 2018, when one questioning the legitimacy of Israel’s land claims was unearthed.

Forced to apologize after also accusing CNN’s Wolf Blitzer of having a bias toward Israel due to his previous association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Reid also wrote the US had ‘no right’ to keep tabs on Iran.

Further scrutiny uncovered posts that promoted homophobia like the ones Morgan alluded to that callously honed in on homosexual politician Charlie Crist and the film ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

In it, Reid also referred to the then Florida governor as ‘Miss Charlie’ while using the ‘gay politicians.’

She also called Senator Lindsey Graham ‘Miss Lindsey’ – after which she was forced to issue a groveling apology after first claiming she had been hacked.

‘I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things, because they are completely alien to me,’ she said on the set of her first canceled MSNBC program, AM Joy, in April 2018. 

A little over two years later, the ReidOut would premiere, raking in nearly 3 million viewers during its first year. 

During the 2024 election, the number was down to about 1.1–1.4 million, after years of anti-Trump rhetoric and  social media rants ‘gave the Standards Department heartburn,’ an insider at the network told Politico.

NBC News boss Cesar Conde and former MSNBC boss Rashida Jones began plotting to get rid of Reid in late 2023, sources told the site in April.

Weeks before, a well-placed executive inside MSNBC told Daily Reid knew her days were numbered due to the one year renewal and pay cut – something Politico framed as ‘severance in drag.’

Instead of taking the hint and quitting after making the negotiations several months ago before the 2024 election, Reid stayed on until her firing in February.

‘[Reid] should have been totally unsurprised by her firing,’ the source said, claiming that Reid should have seen the writing on the wall for months. 

MSNBC denied to provide a statement on this when reached for comment. 

Additionally, the executive claimed that Reid’s vocal stance on the Israel-Hamas war was problematic inside the network. 

They cited Reid’s ‘very intense’ conference calls with show staff that left the impression that she had sympathy for the impact of the war on the Gazan people but little for Israelis.

MSNBC at the time had nothing to say on-the-record about those claims.

Reid has since suggested that she lost her job at least in part because of her pro-Palestinian advocacy.

She revived those claims on Hill’s podcast last week. Her new Joy Reid Show launched on YouTube June 9. The show has roughly 220,000 subscribers.

Morgan’s show, meanwhile, has more than 4million. Viewers will gain access to the interview this afternoon.