Not Fired, Just Demoted: Hamas Apologist Digs In at MSNBC

‘I’m not leaving,’ Ayman Mohyeldin said after network canceled his ‘fearless’ news program

MSNBC didn’t fire Ayman Mohyeldin, the Hamas-aligned host of a poorly rated weekend show—they just demoted him. The left-wing network announced last week it was canceling Ayman, which aired Saturdays and Sundays at 7 p.m., as part of its ongoing restructuring in the face of financial difficulties. But the controversial host isn’t going anywhere.

“I’m not leaving the network, in fact, quite the opposite,” a defiant Mohyeldin told a handful of viewers over the weekend. “Despite the challenging and fearless ways we have covered stories on this show for more than two years, MSNBC has offered to extend my tenure at the company.” Mohyeldin will cohost a new weekend program, launching in April, alongside two other personalities that have yet to be announced.

“Soon, this show, the name, the format will change, and I will be joined by two new incredible hosts who will be announced soon enough,” Mohyeldin said. “But one thing that won’t change is my promise to you, the viewers, that I won’t stop talking about the difficult stories and challenging topics that others don’t cover.” Mohyeldin acknowledged how “saddened” he was by the firing of his “dear friend, ally, and colleague, the fearless Joy Reid,” but declined to echo star host Rachel Maddow, who accused MSNBC of deliberately suppressing non-white voices.

The demoted host’s comment about “challenging topics that others don’t cover” was presumably in reference to his long history of antagonism toward Israel. Mohyeldin has been the foremost Hamas cheerleader on MSNBC since the departure of fellow anti-Israel activist Mehdi Hasan in 2023. Otherwise his show is relatively standard fare for MSNBC, examining topics such as “how Democrats should resist Trump’s agenda” and how the “GOP’s attack on DEI” has gone too far.

In September 2024, Mohyeldin moderated several panels at a Georgetown University conference in Qatar, which has provided a safe harbor to Hamas leaders. The conference featured a number of anti-Israel activists who had praised Hamas and defended the group’s terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Mohyeldin has also been criticized for denouncing Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, whose life and tragic death inspired the hit film American Sniper, as a “racist” who went on “killing sprees” in Iraq. Anti-Hamas advocates have been urging MSNBC to cut ties with Mohyeldin since 2015 after he falsely claimed to have witnessed Israeli authorities shoot an unarmed Palestinian terrorist who rushed a security checkpoint in Jerusalem. Ayman’s colleague Jose Diaz-Balart had to explain that video footage clearly showed the attacker was wielding a knife.

Mohyeldin’s new (albeit slightly less prestigious) gig at MSNBC undermines Maddow’s claim that the network is waging an “indefensible” war on non-white hosts such as Reid, who was fired for having terrible ratings. Reid’s program at 7 p.m. on weekdays will be replaced by another panel show cohosted by three non-white hosts, including Symone Sanders, a former Kamala Harris adviser, and Alicia Menendez, the daughter of convicted felon and former U.S. senator Bob Menendez. Maddow was slammed for criticizing the network, which is struggling to cut costs in part to afford the $25 million annual salary it pays her to appear on television once a week. Mohyeldin is believed to earn about $500-750K per year to work at least two days a week, one of many examples of the alarming racial pay gap at MSNBC.

Al Sharpton, the notorious anti-Semite, will also remain at the network despite being mired in controversy. The racial agitator appears to have suffered no meaningful consequences after the Washington Free Beacon reported in November that the Harris campaign donated $500,000 to Sharpton’s nonprofit group several weeks before he interviewed the candidate on MSNBC. Sharpton is best known for inciting an anti-Semitic riot in 1991 when he denounced Jews in Brooklyn as “diamond merchants” who have the “blood of innocent babies on their hands.” He has also compared the state of Israel to “hell.”

Crucial context: Mohyeldin is married to Kenza Fourati, a French-Tunisian model who appeared in the 2011 edition of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.