Former Republican National Committee Chair and rainbow-fentanyl-misinformation spreader Ronna McDaniel was recently hired to be a paid on-air contributor for NBC. The same person who spread election denialism on CNN less than a year ago will now act as some kind of conservative political expert on an infamous “liberal media” outlet.
NBC News’ “Meet the Press” host Kyrsten Welker interviewed McDaniel on Sunday and quickly distanced herself from the hot garbage fire her employers created, disclosing at the start of the segment, “This interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel had become a paid NBC News contributor. This will be a news interview and I was not involved in her hiring.”
In the interview, Welker asked Trump’s former mouthpiece about the RNC paying for Trump’s lawyers, Trump’s general lionization of Jan. 6 convicts, and McDaniel’s participation in suspected coercion of Wayne County, Michigan, canvassers to reject the 2020 election results. McDaniel’s performance left more questions than answers, as she continued to defend the hogwash that Trump and others (like McDaniel herself) have promoted for years.
After the interview, in an attempt to further distance NBC News from the intense heat of garbage that is on fire, “Meet the Press” held a roundtable discussion to address the mess, featuring journalists Chuck Todd, Kimberly Atkins Stohr, and Stephen Hayes. Todd said NBC executives responsible for hiring McDaniel owed Welker an “apology” for putting her in this unscrupulous situation. Stohr called McDaniel’s credibility as a pundit “completely shot,” and Hayes described McDaniel’s part in the Trump-led 2020 election denialism “a tremendous disservice to the country.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski used their “Morning Joe” show on Monday morning to address the weekend firestorm around McDaniel. Brzezinski described McDaniel as “a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.”
“It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor,” Brzezinski added. “And we do hope that this decision will be reversed.”
On Monday, NBC News’ union also criticized the hire.
“Ronna encouraged a lie that many of our own journalists have spent countless hours debunking,” the guild posted on social media site X, formerly Twitter.
“Our journalism is tarnished by @NBCNews execs elevating a liar over the workers who have spent years delivering the kind of reporting that our newsrooms are typically known for.”
