Hardcore MSNBC Fans Mourn First Election Night Without Steve Kornacki — But Quickly Warm to Replacement Ali Velshi

MSNBC’s first national map night without past fixture Steve Kornacki looked, for a moment, like it might spook MSNBC’s most hardcore partisans, but by the time the returns were rolling, a different verdict emerged and his replacement, journalist Ali Velshi, became the nothing short of a beloved hero.

The channel, soon to rebrand as MS NOW on November 15 parent as Comcast spins off into a new unit called Versant, has been aggressively insisting the split won’t change the core of what it does, and the opinion primetime will remain.

Top-rated hosts like Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Ari Melber, and Lawrence O’Donnell are still the wall they want to build around their identity.

But the first test on election night was the Big Board. And in place of Kornacki, Velshi who took the reins.

The anxiety among the most hardcore MSNBC fans on the corners of Reddit and X was extremely real – until about six minutes into the night, when the consensus utterly flipped.

A poll held by the Redditors sounded out clear approval:

(Screengrab via reddit)

Their feedback was just as enthusiastic:

(Screengrab via reddit)

(Screengrab via reddit)

As the night wore on, a new meme had silently locked in: Velshi’s vest was the new Kornacki khaki.

The absence wasn’t personal. Kornacki signed a new NBC deal last year — he’s still crunching numbers for NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas on NBC News Now, alongside Hallie Jackson and Kristen Welker.

But the purest cable-news creatures, the MSNBC fans, discovered they could love somebody new.