What's next? Cats marrying dogs? Well the cats are having none of it. They don't want a smelly canine messing up their network. Even if it means salvaging their viewership which has dropped in half since the Dark Lord left office.
God forbid the network provides opposing points of view. Can't have that!
Rachel Maddow Joins Growing Mutiny at MSNBC Over Hiring of Ronna McDaniel
Several high-profile hosts at the cable channel objected to NBC’s hiring of the former RNC chairwoman, saying she has helped undermine faith in elections
By Isabella Simonetti, Joe Flint and John McCormick, WSJ
Updated March 25, 2024 11:18 pm ET
Ronna McDaniel will contribute ‘across all NBC News platforms,’ NBC News said Friday.
An on-air mutiny by MSNBC talent against NBC’s hiring of former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel gathered momentum Monday, as several high-profile anchors including Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough condemned the move.
The talent used their shows to voice concerns about McDaniel’s hiring, pointing to what they said was her role in advancing former President Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Jen Psaki, Joy Reid and Mika Brzezinski were among other MSNBC personalities who criticized the move, while NBC’s Chuck Todd blasted the network on Sunday.
“I find the decision to put her on the payroll inexplicable,” Maddow said in her Monday evening telecast. “And I hope they will reverse their decision.” She said the opposition she and her colleagues have to McDaniel isn’t partisan, and isn’t about what they say are her attacks on journalists.
Having McDaniel on is giving airtime to someone who is “about undermining elections and going after democracy,” Maddow said.
A representative for McDaniel didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Collectively, the string of criticism by one big-name anchor after another amounted to an extraordinary rebuke by news talent of their employer’s hiring decision. Bringing in McDaniel didn’t just irritate some staffers—it pushed some of cable TV’s biggest names to engage in a show of on-air insubordination in an effort to undo the decision.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski said they objected to NBC News’s hiring of Ronna McDaniel as a contributor.
Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC, has assured staffers that there are no plans to have McDaniel on the network, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
“We were told this weekend in clear terms Ronna McDaniel will not be on our air,” Maddow said. “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.”
Reid described McDaniel as “a very, very well-paid contributor to NBC News” and “a major peddler of the big lie,” referring to the conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. McDaniel is being paid about $300,000 annually in her new role, according to the person familiar with the matter.
Early in the day, Scarborough weighed in, saying, “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it.”
Until her departure earlier this month from the RNC, McDaniel had been closely aligned with Trump, who helped install her to the post shortly after he was elected in 2016.
The situation at NBC has resurfaced her involvement in events that led up to the attack on the Capitol by a Trump-aligned mob on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as her past tacit endorsement of his false claims that he won the 2020 election.
McDaniel said in her deposition to the select congressional committee investigating the attack that the Trump campaign asked the RNC to help gather “contingent electors” for the Electoral College to help him win, in case legal challenges of the 2020 election results in certain states succeeded.
Her testimony included recollections about a call that included Trump in December 2020 and subsequent efforts to line up alternative electors.
During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, McDaniel acknowledged Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 election “fair and square” in what was a reversal of the tone she had taken on the topic in the past. “Joe Biden won,” she said. “He’s the legitimate president. I have always said, and I continue to say, there were issues in 2020. I believe that both can be true.”
In a July 2023 interview on CNN, McDaniel was less straightforward about her view of the 2020 election results. “I don’t think he won it fair,” she said of Biden, before being asked if he was legitimately elected. “I’m saying there were lots of problems with the 2020 election, and we need to fix it going forward.”
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