Joy Reid, the host of MSNBC ‘s AM Joy , was forced to issue an important correction after the network ran a story about the recently-departed U.S. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and instead, used a picture of the controversial, white nationalist activist Richard Spencer.
According to The Hill , the MSNBC host announced the correction and apologized for the glaring mistake in a video, which she tweeted later on Saturday.
“I want to make a quick correction. This is a pretty big correction. Earlier on AMJoy as we were talking about former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, we mistakenly showed the wrong image of white supremacist Richard Spencer,” Reid admitted in the video clip.
The tweet caption accompanying the video read, in part, “We are very, deeply sorry for that mistake.”
The image mix-up originally aired as Reid and several guests discussed the former Navy secretary and the subsequent scathing op-ed he penned in The Washington Post in which he blasted President Donald Trump for his involvement in the case of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher. Gallagher is the former Navy SEAL who was charged with war crimes from his time in Iraq and was threatened with not being able to keep his military status or his Navy SEAL trident.
Spencer suggested in the op-ed that the president’s involvement in the matter was a “shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review.” Spencer’s opinion on the matter came just three days after he was pushed out of his position as top Navy brass.
As one could expect, the obvious mistake was immediately seized upon by social media users, especially on Twitter, many of whom quickly pointed out MSNBC’s error.
“Oh my god. This actually happened,” White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg tweeted shortly after the segment, adding a screenshot of the mistake.
The wrong Richard Spencer, who has been given credit for coming up with the term “alt-right,” even joined in on the post-error commentary, saying, “On some deep, unconscious level, America wants me to be in charge of the U.S. Navy.”
As The Inquisitr previously reported, Gallagher was charged with killing unarmed Iraqi civilians from a sniper’s perch, including a child and an elderly woman. Though he was eventually acquitted of those charges, he wasn’t able to mount a defense for posing in a picture with a deceased Iraqi prisoner of war, which he was charged for.
Spencer claimed in the op-ed that his firing was the result of his refusal to obey an order from Trump to intervene in Gallagher’s case. Spencer believed that obeying the order would violate “the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith.”
