Out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has joined the chorus of NBC commentators publicly condemning the company for hiring the former head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, as a contributor.
“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.
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McDaniel has been instrumental in uplifting Donald Trump’s anti-democracy rhetoric and in fighting to cast doubt over the American election system overall. She has promoted his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and she defended the Capitol insurrectionists while admonishing the Republican lawmakers who helped investigate the January 6 attack.
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Maddow explained that the country has a long history of “forgettable men telling us that we need a new system of government where everything’s under their control and politics is over and this new strongman way of government is gonna make America great again.”
But Trump has made more of a mark than the rest of them because the Republican party was willing to prop him up.
“The Republican party getting behind that message is a choice,” Maddow emphasized.
“He would have been as forgotten as all the rest of them had he not been able to attach himself to an institution like the Republican Party,” she said, “and had the leader of that party in his time not decided that she wouldn’t just abide him, she would help. She would help with the worst of it.”
Maddow made it clear she wants to stand with her colleagues at MSNBC and NBC News “who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government, someone who still is trying to convince Americans that this election stuff doesn’t really work, that this last election, it wasn’t a real result, that American elections are fraudulent.”
“Because that argument is the most necessary part of getting us as Americans to give up on this election stuff. Because wouldn’t we rather have a real man in charge anyway?”
Maddow also warned that this time in history is crucial for Congress, judges, prosecutors, the media, and really all American citizens to decide whether they will be brave enough to stand up and fight for our system of government.
She said MSNBC’s leadership did not initially object to McDaniel’s hiring at NBC News, but that after the MSNBC staff “essentially unanimously expressed outrage, our leadership at MSNBC heard us, understood, and adjusted course.” She said leadership has been clear that McDaniel will never appear on MSNBC.
Others who have publicly objected to McDaniel’s hiring include NBC’s Chuck Todd, who spoke about it both on air and on X.
“The issue isn’t about ideology,” he wrote, “it’s about basic truth. Those trying to make this a left-right issue are being intentionally dishonest. This is about whether honest journalists are supposed to lend their credibility to someone who intentionally tried to ruin ours.”
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough said, “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring but, if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons. We hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on Morning Joe in her capacity as a paid contributor.”
As Politico‘s Ryan Lizza pointed out, “The on-air protests represent what could be a seminal moment in political media as news organizations continue to grapple with how to responsibly represent voices from the Trump right on their screens and in their pages without handing their platforms over to election deniers or bad faith actors who have attacked and attempted to discredit their own reporters.”
