“The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross” is no more.
Tiffany Cross announced Friday that MSNBC canceled her Saturday morning news program after a less than two-year run. The move came after Cross had become a target of attacks from Fox News and pundit Tucker Carlson.
Cross said in a statement that she was “disheartened” to learn of the decision, which came “abruptly, surprising many of us.”
MSNBC President Rashida Jones was “deeply involved” in the call to cut ties with Cross, according to The Washington Post, which said the network allowed the host’s contract to lapse. A rotating cast of hosts will fill Cross’ time slot until a more permanent solution is found, the Post reported.
The show started in late 2020 following a summer of mass protests against police brutality and made issues facing communities of color a central feature.
“Fresh off the heels of a ‘racial reckoning,’ as so many have called it, we see that with progress, there is always backlash,” Cross said in her statement. “Now is not the time to retreat to politics or business as usual. It is my hope that the last two years at MSNBC have been disruptive and transformative, changing how politics are discussed and making policy more digestible.”
She continued: “Political violence is increasing, and it’s becoming inherently more dangerous to speak the truth. But, after more than 20 years in journalism, I will not stop. The attacks on me from other outlets and former hosts will never control my narrative.”
In late October, Carlson aired a segment about Cross that swiftly received criticism from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Fox host told his audience that Cross was fomenting a “race war” against white people.
Carlson likened “The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross” and MSNBC to the Rwandan media outlet Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, which stoked the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
“Do they know what’s happening on their channel? Are they OK with this?” Carlson asked of MSNBC’s corporate leadership.
The network did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on Saturday.
The ADL said that Carlson had “again used his platform to stoke racial tensions, falsely and dangerously accusing a Black @MSNBC host of instigating a genocide against white people.”
The group tweeted: “His incitement and trivialization of the Rwandan genocide must be forcefully condemned.”
In an essay for The Grio published at the same time her show was set to debut on MSNBC, Cross expressed excitement at having the chance to answer viewers’ questions about politics, which “they may have assumed everyone knew but them.”
She wrote, “There are no dumb questions.”