MSNBC has decided not to renew its contract with contributor Sam Seder after an old tweet emerged in which Seder joked about Roman Polanski raping his daughter, TheWrap has learned.
Seder’s contract ends in February and he has no scheduled appearances between now and then, a spokesperson for MSNBC told TheWrap.
“Don’t care re Polanski, but I hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene,” wrote Seder in the now deleted tweet from 2009.
A person familiar with the situation said the decision to sever ties with Seder was directly related to the Polanski matter.
“Internally there was disgust over the tweet,” said the individual.
The tweet was first brought to wide attention last month by the pro-Trump journalist and activist Mike Cernovich.
Multiple efforts to reach Seder were unsuccessful, but in a segment of his podcast, “The Majority Report with Sam Seder,” last week, he addressed the matter and accused Cernovich of a smear campaign to take him off the air.
“This smear involves the willful misinterpretation of a tweet that I posted in 2009,” said Seder, who said Cernovich and his allies were deliberately misrepresenting him to silence his criticism of Roy Moore and President Trump. “I will never be ashamed of criticizing those who would excuse the predation of women or girls. And I certainly won’t be quiet about Roy Moore or a conservative movement that which would defend his actions so they could get his vote in the Senate.”
Seder said the tweet was satirical and was intended to show his disgust with liberals at the time who were attempting to apologize for Polanksi’s past behavior.
It’s the second time in less than a week that old content has arisen to dog MSNBC. Over the weekend, network anchor Joy Reid was forced to issue a lengthy apology after anti-gay comments she made on a blog between 2007 to 2009 about then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist surfaced on Twitter.
“As a writer, I pride myself on a facility with language — an economy of words or at least some wisdom in the selection. However, that clearly has not always been the case,” wrote Reid in a statement yesterday. “I deeply apologize to Congressman Crist, who was the target of my thoughtlessness. My critique of anti-LGBT positions he once held but has since abandoned was legitimate in my view. My means of critiquing were not.”
In addition to that, sexual misconduct charges have felled MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin while leaving another, Glenn Thrush, on very thin ice. NBC’s “Today” franchise also saw the departure of Matt Lauer last week after management learned of an allegation against him as well.
16 'Morning Joe' Trump Insults That Got Personal, From 'Schmuck' to 'Jackass' (Photos)
President Trump recently received a ton of criticism for sending out a pair of tweets about MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts “Psycho” Joe Scarborough and “low I.Q. Crazy” Mika Brzezinski.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift,” he wrote of an encounter with Brzezinski he claims he had in Florida weeks before his inauguration.
TheWrap
While nothing can justify the president mocking a woman's appearance, the "Morning Joe" duo have been attacking Trump for months.
Check out 16 recent times the MSNBC stars said something that Trump could have taken personally.
MSNBC
They compared him to Kim Jong-un
“This is unprecedented, to have a president who behaves this way,” Brzezinski said on June 23. “It does feel like a developing dictatorship."
Guest Donny Deutsch unloaded on Trump's appearance
Deutsch defended Brzezinski on June 30 following Donald Trump’s attacks on her, calling the president “physically disgusting to look at.”
Deutsch continued: “Enough is enough with this disgusting vulgar man and to talk about women that way, and the irony is you physically look like you do, beyond the stupidity of it. You are a pig."
Brzezinski said what Bill Clinton was to sex, Trump is to "decency"
"What Bill Clinton did to the issue of sex to an entire generation, I believe this president is doing on issues of decency, on issues of conspiracy theories, on issues of fake news," Brzezinski said in June 15. "I think it's that simple and we're desensitized if we even argue it."
"If the president seems delusional about his accomplishments, you can point no further than that room," Brzezinski said in June 14. "There are no real men in the inner circle of the White House... none at all."
After Trump staffers praised the president during a cabinet meeting, Scarborough said on June 13 it “was the most sick, shameful, pathetic, un-American, autocratic display.”
He continued: “I will tell you if I were ever in meeting and people did that to me, I would say shut up and I would fire you.”
Brzezinski called President Trump a “narcissist” and said it’s possible that he’s “mentally ill in a way” on June 8.
She continued: “I said it months ago… he’s not well. At the very least he’s not well and he’s so narcissistic that he does not believe the rules apply to him."
“Donald Trump, again, being a schmuck, thinking he can buy people’s integrity by inviting them over to the White House and wowing them,” Scarborough said on June 7 when discussing a dinner party at the White House. “That’s how he thinks. I know that first hand.”
Scarborough said Trump “is not a sane, rational human being”
“If any CEO, in a Fortune 500 company, was behaving this way, he or she would be removed immediately… they would take him out, he would have psychiatric evaluation and he would no longer be the CEO,” Scarborough said on June 6.
Scarborough blasted “President Bannon” on June 2 for the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord on climate change — using the trolling phrase seven times in half a minute.
“Time magazine was right: Steve Bannon is the president of the United States,” the MSNBC host said, before launching into a 30-second monologue referencing “President Bannon” repeatedly.
The morning show played audio of Press Secretary Sean Spicer telling reporters during an off-camera gaggle that Trump’s “covfefe” tweet wasn’t a typo and Americans shouldn’t be concerned.
Brzezinski set up her fiancé, “You said… it’s like a kid pooping their pants and then saying, ‘I meant to do that.”
“Well yes. It would be like somebody pooping their pants and then people looking at it and saying ‘oh that’s modern art don’t you understand,'” Scarborough said on June 1.
Scarborough called Trump a “bumbling dope” on May 11 because of the way a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister was handled.
“Looking at the front pages of the newspapers here… The Wall Street Journal also, you look, of course, at pictures. The shameful picture where the United States press corps was kept out but the Russians were allowed in,” Scarborough said while holding up the paper.
Scarborough slammed Trump on March 31, saying that Russians are lucky that POTUS is “stupid enough” to pick up their fake news.
“We’re obsessed on how the Russians have hacked, how the Russians have tried to impact this, how the Russians have tried to impact the White House,” Scarborough said. “We’re really just playing into their hands.”
MSNBC stars Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski attack the president on a daily basis
President Trump recently received a ton of criticism for sending out a pair of tweets about MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts “Psycho” Joe Scarborough and “low I.Q. Crazy” Mika Brzezinski.
“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift,” he wrote of an encounter with Brzezinski he claims he had in Florida weeks before his inauguration.