The Media Research Center’s whining that NBC’s hiring of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel was criticized by other NBC employees because her history of dishonesty and false attacks on the media went into its third day on March 26, starting with a post by Curtis Houck:
MSNBC’s Rich, White, Liberal, Wine Mom Story Hour (aka Deadline: White House) made sure Monday afternoon to add its voice to the shrieking, almost infantile-like meltdown across the liberal media over parent company NBC’s decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor.
Over three segments, host Nicolle Wallace melted down over McDaniel (or, to be honest, any Trump supporter) polluting “our sacred airwaves.” By Tuesday afternoon, the outrage worked as Puck’s Dylan Byers first reported she’d be dropped from the company.
From the get-go, the queen of apocalyptic, hiding-under-the-covers but pious rhetoric went straight to a ten: “The times in which we do this — when we meet, you and us at the table are — I don’t have tell you this, dire. This show has dedicated itself to a jarring pursuit of the uncomfortable truth about our politics and our political leaders and our justice system and yes, the media.”
[…]The second segment featured Wallace alongside fellow former Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-pompous prick David Jolly. Wallace huffed how “[t]hese conversations are hard to have, but I think if you don’t have them, what are we doing here.”
Jolly insisted this was “a conversation about the role of media, about decisions of news enterprises” before bragging with impressive pomposity that “the viewers of this platform in particular for at least eight years have found a home here for conversations around protecting democracy and what they saw in the hiring of Ronna McDaniel is a decision to bring on-board someone who’s a liar.”
Doubling down on how McDaniel shouldn’t be allowed on NBC because she “undermin[ed] democracy,” Jolly proclaimed that, unlike some “media outlets” (i.e. Fox News or anyone to the right of Jolly) who have “abandon[ed] critical thinking,” MSNBC would remain steadfast in “being the backstop…protecting democracy”.
[…]Someone get Jolly and Wallace fainting couches. No one should ever confuse them as free thinkers.
With all of his gratuitous, infantile insults, no one should ever confuse Houck for a serious media critic. He also made no attempt to dispute Jolly’s assertion that McDaniel is a liar, suggesting he agrees with that assessment.
Alex Christy tossed his own insults at another MSNBC host:
MSNBC’s Joy Reid was not the only NBC and MSNBC employee to lament the hiring of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, but she may have been the most unintentionally hilarious. The noted election denier used Monday’s edition of The ReidOut to claim that she has no problems with the network hiring Republicans because some of them even guest host her show, the most left-wing show on the country’s most left-wing TV channel.
During a discussion with The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes and Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast, Reid declared that her and others’ opposition to McDaniel’s hiring “is not about having not Republicans on. My good friend Michael Steele is the former, also, RNC chair. Who guests hosts this show and my friend.”
It’s nice that Reid and Steele are friends, but simply being friends doesn’t mean you’re qualified to host a show. The fact that Steele guest hosts The ReidOut and fills in for other MSNBC progressives means Reid and her colleagues trust him to tell viewers what they want to hear.
Reid was just getting started, “One of the best broadcasters on this network is Nicolle Wallace, who is a brilliant broadcaster and a former Republican, who worked for a president I was literally in a campaign to work against: George W. Bush.”
Wallace also worked for John McCain’s, the quintessential moderate Republican that MSNBC claims to love, 2008 presidential campaign, and she still didn’t vote for him.
Christy also tried to play whataboutism:
While MSNBC is criticizing McDaniel for her 2020 views, it should be noted that CNN once hacked up its own interview of McDaniel to give a false impression of what she said, while MSNBC took the butchered version and portrayed it as real.
In fact, he’s whining that CNN edited out a part of the interview in which she alluded to the MRC-endorsed conspiracy theory that the brief restriction on coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t hurt Biden’s election chances.
Bill D’Agostino groused that the concerns of NBC talent got results:
Looks like the last two days of on-air temper tantrums by MSNBC hosts have paid off. According to Puck News founding partner and senior correspondent Dylan Byers, NBC News executives already plan to remove former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor.
Just after 1 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Byers tweeted: “NBC NEWS plans to drop ex RNC-chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor following on-air revolt from NBC/MSNBC talent. Execs are deliberating over details; announcement pending. Meanwhile, McDaniel is seeking legal representation.”
By “on-air revolt,” Byers was referring to Monday’s outpouring of sanctimony by MSNBC hosts Joy Reid, Mika Brzezinski, Nicolle Wallace, Rachel Maddow, and others.
[…]Apparently the mere presence of a Trump-endorsed former RNC head is all it takes to cause a riot over at MSNBC these days.
Nicholas Fondacaro invoked the MRC’s favorite right-wing channel that it denies is a right-wing channel:
Hours before news broke that NBC News may be firing their newly hired Republican political analyst, former RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, NewsNation stuck it to their cable news rival. During Monday night’s Cuomo, correspondent at-large Geraldo Rivera called out their “pretentious bullshit,” and host Chris Cuomo proclaimed that “the hypocrisy reeks” at the network.
Cuomo led into the segment by calling out his former morning show rivals (when he co-hosted CNN’s New Day) for their rank “hypocrisy” in calling for McDaniel’s ouster when they benefitted from being pals with Donald Trump before he got elected:
[…]Seeming almost prophetic in hindsight, Rivera’s final advice for McDaniel was to wait it out and maybe have a nice payday in court: “My thought is that I hope she tells them all to screw it, she’s sticking around, forces them to fire her and then sues them for millions because that they have humiliated her in a very, very unjust way.”
Perhaps NewsNation saw the writing on the wall and were making an on-air play to appeal to McDaniel if/when NBC gave her the boot.
Jorge Bonilla pouted further that the anti-McDaniel revolt won:
Several of the hosts at MSNBC, pleased with having cowed leadership into terminating the contract of former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, took to the air and celebrated the ouster in an eye roll-inducing display of pious self-congratulation. The inmates rejoice, secure in the knowledge that they do, in fact, run the asylum.
[…]A recurring theme here is the insistence from some of these propagandists on calling themselves journalists. Especially Maddow, who willfully spread some of the most egregious lies on the efficacy of the Covid vaccine and who gleefully reported the Russia Hoax as factual. What does this all say about [NBCUniversal News Chairman] Cesar conde, who allowed himself to be held hostage on personnel decisions by a bunch of partisan propagandists?
Actually, there was no “Russia Hoax” — the Trump campaign indisputably met dozens of times with Russian operatives, and Trump’s campaign manager gave internal polling data to another Russian operative, which Bonilla would know if he had bothered to read the Mueller report. Instead, his pouting continued:
Again, the biggest fraud here is these guys insisting that they be taken seriously as “journalists”. Say what you want about Ronna, but she’s the most transparent out of everyone involved in this sorry episode. Hayes has some chutzpah talking about polluted information environments, given MSNBC’s role (and the corporate media’s writ large) in polluting the information environment.
Bonilla was hypocritically silent on how right-wing media like Fox News has generated exponentially more pollution in the information environment.