Of course they did.
The Russian troll factory looked for heavily partisan and divisive political intersections to exploit. And MSNBC doesn't get much more divisive than Joy-Ann Reid. So it's no wonder that the MSNBC ranter was a troll favorite.
According to an analysis of the raw data by Law&Crime, Joy-Ann Reid–recently and glowingly profiled as a heroine of the #Resistance by the New York Times–received some 267 total retweets by the private sector Russian troll brigade...
Reid, the host of AM Joy has long been one of the most vociferous Russiagaters and shows no signs of stopping. On Sunday, she tweeted, “Russia has played this game before — pretending to empathize with Black Americans’ plight as a way of playing them and stripping them of their rights. The Russian government is not our friend — NONE of us.” Reid was also heavily mocked after she tweeted that Russia is still communist in 2016–it is/was not.
In fact, Joy-Ann Reid has made somewhat of a sport out of criticizing Sanders’ over the Russian issue in particular. Last year, she criticized Sanders and his supporters for repeating claims of Democratic National Committee fraud as little more than a Russian plot.
Russian trolls are actually a fan of Russian plot narratives because it boosts the perceptions of Russian power. It's why Putin and Co. have winked at the conspiracy theories, playing the traditional KGB game (and that of many of the world's best intel services and secret police forces) of denying without really denying, creating ambiguity to reshape power perceptions.
The favorites of the troll factory are divisive and ignorant. The ignorant part is important because the larger agenda was sneaking in Russian political content into the partisan American content. The trolls weren't actually there to support Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders or Trump. They were there to build influence in order to push core Kremlin content.
And that's easier to do with the angry and ignorant. Joe Reid is still angry and ignorant.
Does Joy report to Vladimir? That's obviously unlikely. But it is the kind of rhetoric we've seen from her compatriots on the left. What's good for the goose ought to be good for the MSNBC host from Moscow.