In March , NBC caused a bit of controversy when it hired former Republican National Committee chairman Ronna McDaniel to be a commentator — and the Media Research Center was mad that her hiring was questioned. Tim Graham complained in a March 24 post:
Internal liberal outrage boiled over into an on-air struggle session on Meet the Press. NBC just hired Ronna McDaniel immediately after she was removed as Republican National Committee leader, and so moderator Kristen Welker punched away at McDaniel for 20 minutes, and when that was finished, they had a roundtable about the horror of NBC’s hiring, combined with this awkward interview, which was scheduled before the personnel move.
Everyone on set seemed blissfully unaware of how it looked to the public when NBC was negotiating with White House press secretary Jen Psaki about a position while she was still at the White House. No one’s ever complained in a Sunday morning meltdown.
But Graham found absolutely nothing to complain about in the McDaniel-Welker interview, judging by the lack of a post about it. It’s only when show host Chuck Todd talked to Welker about it afterward and pointed out that McDaniel has no credibility with the media after spending years lashing out at it from her RNC perch:
Todd concluded by again praising Welker’s grilling: “I think you did everything you could do. You got put into an impossible situation, booking this interview, and then all of a sudden the rug’s pulled out from under you. You find out she’s being paid to show up. That’s – that’s unfortunate for this program, but I am glad you did the best that you could, and that’s why the three of us are on here, to try to bolster that editorial independence.”
They’re so deep inside a Democrat bubble they have no idea half of America starts pointing and laughing when they talk about “editorial independence.” NBC, the network that had Kennedy offspring Maria Shriver as a reporter for years, and then hired Chelsea Clinton as a reporter (and she’d never been a reporter).
Kimberly Atkins Stohr seconded Todd’s emotion: “So her credibility is completely shot. So I have to do what Maya Angelou said, I believe what they do and not anything that she said today. And in that I know that she habitually lied, she habitually joined Trump in attacking the press – members of the press, including this network, in a way that put journalists at risk, in danger.”
When “Stephen Hayes of The Dispatch, an anti-Trump website,” pointed out McDaniel’s credibility deficit, Graham could only offer whataboutism: “Hayes failed to put Psaki’s hiring on the table.” Graham offered no evidence that Psaki has any credibility issues, let alone any to the extent that McDaniel has.
Mark Finkelstein was similarly petulant in a March 25 post:
It wasn’t enough for Mika Brzezinski to declare that Ronna McDaniel would never darken Morning Joe‘s doorway.
On today’s episode, Mika, on behalf of the show, called on NBC to fire McDaniel. Or as Mika couched it, “we hope NBC will reconsider its decision,” to have hired former RNC chair McDaniel as a political commentator.
When Brzezinski pointed out that McDaniel is an “election denier,” Finkelstein tried to justify her falsehood:
[…]These brave anti-Ronna dissidents at NBC and MSNBC have a very broad definition of “election denier” — you can’t say Biden won, but the election wasn’t fair. You can’t complain about Big Tech squashing the Hunter Biden laptop story, and you can’t complain about ZuckerBucks flowing into liberal areas for turnout, or loosening all the voter eligibility rules for the pandemic.
As we’ve repeatedly pointed out, no Zuckerberg money was ever specifically earmarked to to go “liberal areas,” and encouraging people to vote isn’t a crime.
Nicholas Fondacaro made the McDaniel story part of his daily hate-watch of “The View” (with added whining about Psaki):
The revolving door between American politics and the media only becomes an issue when the wannabe gatekeepers don’t like who comes through. The mean girls of ABC’s The View had their knives out for former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Monday after she was hired by NBC News to be a commentator. And their infamous hypocrisy was on full display as they decried her for doing what many of their friends did to get into the business, including some of the cast members themselves.
Following a clip of NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd melting down on Meet the Press over the weekend, faux conservative Ana Navarro lacked self-awareness when she decried McDaniel as “a shapeshifter” who “says and does what’s convenient for her to say and do when it’s convenient.”
[…]And speaking of former Trump supporters who were allowed to “reinvent herself” (as Navarro whined), useless Republican Alyssa Farah Griffin refused to mention criticism of NBC’s ethically dubious hire of former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who was fielding questions from NBC reporters when it was publically know she was destined to get a show on the network.
Psaki was even taking questions from then-White House correspondent Kristen Welker, who Farah Griffin praised as “an incredible journalist.”
Fondacaro yet again raged that co-host Sunny Hostin is “staunchly racist and anti-Semitic” — both demonstrable lies, and this will surely end up on the growing pile of evidence for Hostin’s eventual defamation lawsuit against Fondacaro and the MRC.
Graham ranted about the situation on his March 25 podcast:
From NBC’s Meet the Press to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the liberal bubble is in a furious revolt against ex-RNC boss Ronna McDaniel joining their team as a commentator. They want her fired before she begins. But they’re all for ideological diversity….yeah, right.
They can’t stand anyone who defends Donald Trump or who would vote for him.
Chuck Todd appeared on his old show to demand the NBC brass apologize to Kristen Welker for the embarrassment of having to interview the new NBC commentator. She grilled her for 20 minutes. Todd said some mockable things in his Sunday sermon.
First, that McDaniel’s party apparatus was guilty of “character assassination” of the press. Earth to Chuck: Have you never engaged with the possibility that Republicans think YOU and your network do LOTS of character assassination of Trump, and of anyone remotely associated with Trump, as in everyone who’s ever voted for Trump?
Then we can laugh at Chuck taking umbrage that “we gave her NBC News’s credibility.” Credibility? In the public eye? What the media’s approval rating? It’s lower than Congress. It’s lower than Biden.
This is coming from a guy with an organization whose editorial policy is to be unable to stand anyone who defends President Biden or who would vote from him.
When Psaki herself weighed in, Jorge Bonilla ranted about it:
One might reasonably believe, given her brazen negotiation with NBC while still serving as White House Press Secretary, that Jen Psaki would be the absolute last person to run her mouth over the Peacock Network’s hiring of former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. But, alas, these are not reasonable times.
Psaki did, in fact, weigh in on the McDaniel hire in a self-indulgent and fundamentally unself-aware editorial on tonight’s broadcast of Inside with Jen Psaki.
[…]We know full well that there is an incestuous, revolving door between (almost exclusively Democratic) politics and the media. MSNBC hired Psaki, as Chuck Todd intimated during his own meltdown, purely for access. What Psaki brings to MSNBC’s viewers is a peek into the inner workings of the Obama and Biden administrations. As does Symone Sanders-Townsend. This is the access that MSNBC paid for.
Bonilla was silent about the revolving door between Fox News and not only the Trump administration but also his own employer, so his argument falls flat. Still, he continued to rant:
I will not apologize for being unimpressed by one political hack, among many, decrying the hiring of another political hack at a network known for its political hackery. Congratulations to Psaki on cashing in, I guess, but just spare us. And if there is to be a next moral lecture, try to deliver it without shamelessly ripping off Barack Obama’s 2004 “Red States, Blue States” speech.
Bonilla would never say that to Kayleigh McEnany’s face, even though she did effectively the same thing.