Just four days after she was hired -- and before she even started -- former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was fired by NBC News on Tuesday as the network bent to the wishes of its on-air "talent" who protested her hiring during their programs.
McDaniel was poised to become a talking head providing insights on politics heading into November's general election. News of McDaniel's hiring broke on Friday, immediately igniting a firestorm among leftists inside and outside of NBC's walls.
In the few days that followed, a parade of hosts -- including Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough and Joy Reid, dedicated portions of their shows to raking their bosses over the coals for hiring McDaniel. Rachel Maddow was among the most melodramatically warped, saying that having McDaniel on the payroll was "inexplicable" because she "hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but...is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government."
Maddow laying out the case against Ronna McDaniel pic.twitter.com/WBKchchxnT
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 26, 2024
On Tuesday, NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde waved the surrender flag in a memo to staff:
“No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.
After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor. I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down."
McDaniel, who oversaw seven years of Republican electoral underperformance before resigning in February, was hired by NBC News editorial chief Rebecca Blumenstein. “They thought this would bring in more conservative viewers and give a conservative point of view,” a source at NBC tells the New York Post. “It is misguided given that no wing of the conservative movement claims Ronna any longer! Don’t understand how no one realized that.”
NBC's fiasco was indeed multi-faceted. Aside from choosing a non-conservative to appeal to conservatives, the move precipitated a spectacle of hypocrisy, as Maddow and others who relentlessly promoted the Russiagate hoax and cheer on efforts to remove Trump from 2024 ballots assailed McDaniel for being dishonest and supposedly undermining democracy.
On his nightly show System Update, Glenn Greenwald found the whole thing darkly amusing:
At least this gave us the priceless spectacle of Chuck Todd lamenting that NBC would lend its sacred "credibility" to someone like Ronna McDaniel.@GGreenwald: "Every poll shows that there are few institutions held in lower esteem than large media corporations like NBC... They… https://t.co/AFM68VZfCM pic.twitter.com/w96MXdA9j6
— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) March 26, 2024
As much as NBC would like to think this whole clusterf*** is behind them, McDaniel, who is Mitt Romney's niece, is reportedly looking for an attorney, presumably to help her shake some money out of the peacock's feathers.
Meanwhile, Conde told employees that he and the network are committed having "diverse viewpoints" and will "redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum." In other words, get ready for NBC to prop up a purported "conservative" who gets a stamp of approval from the likes of Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid.
