Joy Reid got fired from MSNBC and just proved exactly why.
Now she's got a podcast.
And her first big swing is calling Elon Musk "actually an idiot" while getting the most basic facts about Tesla completely wrong.
What She Actually Said
On The Joy Reid Show, Reid told her audience that Musk is a fraud who only bought into Tesla after two other men built it from scratch.
"You keep telling them, 'But he invented Tesla,' when he didn't, he just bought it," Reid said. "Two other white dudes invented Tesla, they're geniuses. Elon just bought it and now people think he's a genius."
She called him "actually an idiot."
She called the Cybertruck "sh*t."
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2082130013487292426?s=20
The problem: almost nothing she said is accurate – and the part that is accurate doesn't mean what she thinks it means.
The Facts Reid Either Doesn't Know or Chose to Ignore
Yes, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla in July 2003. Reid got that right.
Everything else fell apart.
Musk didn't just "buy it."
He contributed $6.35 million of the $6.5 million raised in Tesla's entire first funding round – the investment that kept the company alive.
Without that money, there was no Tesla.
Eberhard himself admitted he "was not a zillionaire" when starting Tesla and desperately needed outside capital.
Musk then became chairman of the board, took an active role in product design and engineering, and personally shaped the Roadster – Tesla's first vehicle.
He applied first-principles thinking to battery costs, driving them from roughly $600 per kilowatt-hour down toward $80 – the breakthrough that made the whole business model work.
When Tesla was hemorrhaging cash and nearly collapsed in 2008, Musk became CEO and pumped in more of his own money to keep it alive.
A legal settlement between Tesla and Eberhard – an actual court settlement – formally recognized Musk alongside Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel, and Ian Wright as co-founders.
https://twitter.com/DefiantLs/status/2081811859712152010?s=20
When Eberhard separately asked a judge to strip Musk of that designation, the judge dismissed the claim.
Reid doesn't mention any of this.
Reid Got Fired and Replaced Research With Grievance
MSNBC cut Reid in February when new network leadership overhauled its prime-time lineup.
She launched her podcast months later, promising to "challenge power" and speak without the limits of traditional television.
What she's actually doing is recycling a talking point because it gets Elon Musk trending.
Reid didn't investigate the Tesla founding story.
She took the one piece that fit her narrative, dropped the rest, and called it journalism.
That's not journalism.
That's performance.
She Called the Idiot the Wrong Person
Reid called the Cybertruck "s**t" while driving traffic to a clip on X – a platform Musk owns.
She left out every fact that contradicted her story, because including those facts would have killed the clip.
That's not a journalist challenging power.
That's a fired cable host doing exactly what she accused Musk of – selling an incomplete story to an audience that won't check.
What Joy Reid Actually Proved
Reid set out to expose a fraud.
She ended up demonstrating that a cable news veteran with decades of experience can repeat a half-true internet talking point, ignore the full history of one of the most documented corporate stories in Silicon Valley, and call a man who saved a nearly-bankrupt startup with his own money – and turned it into the most recognizable electric vehicle company on earth – an idiot.
She got fired from MSNBC.
He's worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The voters she spent years lecturing figured out who the idiot was a long time ago.
Sources:
- "Tesla existed before Elon Musk: Founders on how they pitched the idea," Green Car Reports, February 9, 2021.
- "Judge strikes claim on who can be declared a founder of Tesla Motors," Tesla press release, July 29, 2009.
- "Joy Reid Reveals New Show and Talks 'New Chapter' After MSNBC Firing," TV Insider, May 30, 2025.
- "Five People Founded Tesla, But Only Elon Musk Became Extremely Rich," Olas Newsletter, 2023.
- "Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla, and Shaping the Future," Quartr Insights, September 15, 2025.