NBC News has booted Ronna McDaniel, former head of the Republican National Committee (RNC), as a contributor after a widespread outcry on-the-air by multiple MSNBC hosts, including lesbian political commentator Rachel Maddow.
Maddow and other MSNBC hosts had spoken on their shows against McDaniel’s hiring because she used her role at the RNC to empower former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential elections. “The fact that Ms. McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News is inexplicable,” Maddow told viewers on Monday night, comparing the decision to hiring a mobster to work for a district attorney. McDaniel had referred to MSNBC reporters as “primetime propagandists” just last May.
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“After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor,” NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde wrote in a Monday letter to NBC News 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.”
Last week, NBC News announced McDaniel would appear across NBC News platforms, including MSNBC. However, the announcement was quickly met with swift and outspoken disapproval from MSNBC hosts, including Maddow, Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Lawrence O’Donnell, Joe Scarborough, and Mika Brzezinski.
Scarborough and Brzezinski promised viewers that McDaniel would never appear on their show. Wallace said that McDaniel’s hiring at NBC signaled to election deniers “not just that they can do that on our airwaves, but that they can do that as one of us, a badge-carrying employee of NBC News, as a paid contributor to our sacred airwaves,” the Associated Press reported.
Conde said the decision to hire McDaniel was his, stating, “I approved it and take full responsibility for it.”
“Our initial decision was made because of our deep commitment to presenting our audiences with a widely diverse set of viewpoints and experiences, particularly during these consequential times,” Conde said in his letter. “We continue to be committed to the principle that we must have diverse viewpoints on our programs, and to that end, we will redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.”
During her time as the RNC chair, McDaniel repeated Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. Trump baselessly claimed that an unprecedented conspiracy of voter fraud, which only occurred in the states he lost, “stole” the 2020 election from him. However, the Trump campaign’s claims were rejected over 60 times for lack of evidence in courts across the country, including in rulings by Trump-appointed judges.
In November 2021, McDaniel issued an email apology to the RNC’s 168 members, assuring them that the Republican Party has no plans to actually support LGBTQ+ equality despite the RNC’s outreach efforts to get LGBTQ voters to vote for Republicans.
