I watched MS NOW’s live coverage of the primaries on Tuesday, because I love seeing the whole nerdy bunch of anchors hosting together, and you never know what Jacob Soboroff is gonna get up to with his out-in-the-field reporting (he interviewed the Dolores Huerta!). As if election night news wasn’t exciting enough, there were also a couple breaking stories that made me glad I tuned in. One was the Supreme Court allowing Alabama to erase the only two majority-Black districts in a new GOP map. Not surprising, still infuriating. The other story was the news of CBS firing revered 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, as Kaiser covered yesterday. As the news of the firing and Scott’s letter of response was coming in, Rachel Maddow was utterly transparent about the dangerous politics of this move by CBS. She also invited the newly-available Scott to join MS NOW:

Shortly after the veteran 60 Minutes correspondent was fired from CBS on Tuesday, June 2, Maddow revealed during MS NOW’s special election coverage that she hopes Pelley will land “right here,” referring to her home network.

During her latest TV appearance, Maddow said she “made a crack” about the firing being part of a “Hungarian, oligarchic-style takeover of the media,” an accusation she said she was “sort of deadly serious” about.

“There’s nobody who is more acutely attuned to the value of a free press than those who are trying to take it away,” Maddow said. “And when the president baldly says, ‘I am going to use the power of the state in order to get the media that I want,’ and he lines up oligarchic friends in order to do that for him. Again, there’s no pretense. There’s no saying this is for any other reason.”

She added, “There’s nothing else going on at CBS News other than what we can see is happening at CBS News. And I don’t know where Scott Pelley will land. Frankly, I hope he lands right here.”

Maddow, 53, said she hopes Pelley “stays on TV” despite the firing. “I hope he’s on TV tomorrow. And I hope that everybody in journalism and everybody who values a free press figues out ways to outmaneuver the people who are trying to take the free press from us.”

She added, “But it is a fully joined fight at this point. And there’s no, I just don’t think there’s any pretense that anything else was happening here.”

PEOPLE has reached out to a rep for CBS News for comment.

Pelley’s removal from 60 Minutes was announced via a termination letter on Tuesday, when the show’s new executive producer, Nick Bilton, accused the correspondent of “ambush,” “hostility” and “misconduct.”

In the letter, obtained by PEOPLE, the EP accused Pelley of showing “performative display[s] of hostility,” and having “no interest in contributing to the future success of the show.” The firing follows Pelley allegedly clasing with Bilton during a tense staff meeting at 60 Minutes, per both The New York Times and The Guardian.

…According to Variety, Weiss addressed Pelley’s firing, telling staffers on a conference call Wednesday morning, June 3, “We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose.”

[From People]

GMAFB, “that’s the path that he chose.” Scott Pelley nailed it when he said Bari Weiss was out to “murder” 60 Minutes, at Trump’s behest, and that she had no qualifications for her job, while new EP Nick Bilton had “slender qualifications.” And as managers, Weiss and Bilton acted like babies, crying that their feewings were hurt by Scott at the staff meeting. But it’s exactly like Scott and Rachel have said: these are the marching orders for the people now in charge of CBS/Paramount, and it’s why Stephen Colbert was booted off the air. And don’t forget, the same corporate buffoons are set to inherit Warner Bros/HBO/CNN. THIS is why we were terrified of Paramount winning the merger war over Netflix, because whatever is happening now at CBS News is sure as sh-t going to happen to CNN. And to John Oliver at HBO. At which point, MS NOW really will be one of the last major networks available to journalists. I hope Scott takes Rachel up on the offer.

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