MSNBC Hosts Mutiny Over Ronna McDaniel Across Prime Time
Network star Rachel Maddow calls decision to hire former RNC chair "inexplicable"
Some of the noisiest objections to the NBC News decision to hire the former chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) was right there on one of its own networks, for the world to see.
Several of MSNBC’s popular weeknight, primetime hosts were in open rebellion Monday evening, criticizing their own bosses’ decision to hire Ronna McDaniel after she recently stepped down from the RNC after a history of denying the results of the 2020 presidential election, and spreading other falsehoods at the behest of Donald Trump.
It’s been extraordinary to watch some of the most prominent figures at NBC News blast the decision to hire McDaniel as a paid political analyst, right there on-camera.
What began Sunday on NBC’s flagship public affairs program, Meet The Press, with sharp, on-air criticism of the McDaniel hire by both current moderator, Kristen Welker and her predecessor, Chuck Todd, carried over the following morning with more on-camera condemnation by the co-hosts of the popular drive time program on the MSNBC cable outlet, Morning Joe.
But the McDaniel controversy wouldn't end there, as it lit up MSNBC’s primetime hosts Monday evening, as well.
Joy Reid devoted much of her program to the McDaniel fiasco, interviewing political commentators Charlie Sykes and Molly Jong-Fast about it.
And longtime MSNBC star Rachel Maddow made it clear where she stood.
“The First Amendment to which makes it possible for us to exist at all. And so I want to associate myself with all my colleagues both at MSNBC and at NBC News who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government,” said Maddow, who has been with MSNBC since 2008. “Someone who still is trying to convince Americans that this election stuff, it doesn’t really work, that this last election, it wasn’t a real result. That American elections are fraudulent. Because that argument, that is a necessary part that is the most necessary part of the overall project of getting us as Americans to give up on this election stuff.”
Trump wouldn’t have gotten as far as he has in promoting his brand of authoritarianism if not for the active assistance of the Republican party and people like Ronna McDaniel, Maddow said.
“He would have been as forgotten as all the rest of them had he not been able to attach himself to an institution like the Republican Party and had the leader of that party in his time not decide that she would abide him, she would help. She would help with the worst of it,” she said.
Maddow also gave her viewers an extraordinarily honest and journalistic account of McDaniel’s standing within the MSNBC organization.
“It’s my understanding that MSNBC’s leadership did not object to Ronna McDaniel being hired by NBC News when the matter first arose, but when the hiring was announced, and MSNBC staff essentially unanimously and instantly expressed outrage, our leadership at MSNBC heard us, understood, and adjusted course,” Maddow said. “We were told this weekend in clear terms Ronna McDaniel will not be on our air. Ronna McDaniel will not be on MSNBC.
“And I say that and give you that level of detail because there has been an effort since by other parts of the company to muddy that up in the press and make it seem like that’s not what happened at MSNBC,” she added. “I can assure you, that is what happened at MSNBC. Ronna McDaniel will not appear on MSNBC, so says our boss since Saturday. And it has never been anything other than clear. And I will also say if you care what I think about this, I will tell you the fact that Ms. McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News, to me that is an inexplicable.
“You wouldn’t hire a wiseguy — you wouldn’t hire a made man like a mobster — to work at a [district attorney’s] office, right? You wouldn’t hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener. And so I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable,” Maddow said. “And I hope they will reverse their decision.”
Following Maddow’s program, host Lawrence O’Donnell came on and also addressed the situation, by disclosing one cutting question he would ask McDaniel — who is the niece of Republican Sen Mitt Romney, of Utah — why she was willing to change her name just to get her job at the RNC.
“My first question would be: Why did you change your name for Donald Trump? Before Trump ran for president, her name was Ronna Romney McDaniel. How does that feel, to change her name to curry favor with the madman because he doesn’t like your uncle?” O’Donnell asked. “How did you explain that to your kids? What lesson did your kids learn from that?
“And I mention her kids because she always mentions her kids and that she is a mother whenever she’s speaking publicly,” he added.
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