MSNBC host Joy Reid apologized on Friday for a blog post published more than a decade ago that included an image of Sen. John McCain’s head photoshopped on top of the body of the Virginia Tech shooter.
Reid, who has come under fire in recent months over other posts on her now-defunct blog, said in a statement that she felt regret and embarrassment.
“While I published my blog, starting in 2005, I wrote thousands of posts in real time on the issues of the day. There are things I deeply regret and am embarrassed by, things I would have said differently and issues where my position has changed. Today I’m sincerely apologizing again,” Reid said in a statement provided to NBC News.
“I’m sorry for the collateral damage and pain this is causing individuals and communities caught in the crossfire,” Reid said. “To be clear, I have the highest respect for Sen. McCain as a public servant and patriot and wish him and his family the best.”
Reid added that she had “reached out” to Meghan McCain, the senator’s daughter, who tweeted on Thursday that the photoshopped image of her father was “beyond disgusting and disgraceful.” Sen. McCain is battling brain cancer.
The blog post, published in October 2007 and titled “Baghdad John strikes again,” was uncovered by BuzzFeed News and reported this week.
The post mocks McCain’s pledge as a presidential candidate to follow Osama bin Laden to “the gates of hell.” The photoshopped image shows the Arizona senator's head on the body of Seung-Hui Cho, the undergraduate student who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in April 2007.
In a statement, MSNBC said some of the posts on Reid’s blog are “obviously hateful and hurtful.”
“They are not reflective of the colleague and friend we have known at MSNBC for the past seven years,” the cable network said. “Joy has apologized publicly and privately and said she has grown and evolved in the many years since, and we know this to be true.”
Reid also addressed a separate blog post in which she appears to promote “Loose Change 9/11,” a web documentary that propgates 9/11 conspiracy theories. The series was produced in part by InfoWars host Alex Jones, a controversial conspiracy theorist and radio personality.
The post, published in March 2006 and titled “The official story,” was also uncovered by BuzzFeed News and reported this week.
“There is no question in my mind that Al Qaeda perpetrated the 9/11 attacks or about Israel’s right to its sovereignty,” Reid said in her statement.
Reid, who joined MSNBC in 2004, had previously apologized for homophobic blog posts surfaced by an anonymous Twitter user. She said in April that she had no proof her blog was hacked to include some of the posts, as she had originally suggested.