Why MSNBC inmates forced boss to drop GOP’s McDaniel

March 27, 2024 34 Comments

Some have described it as the inmates taking over the asylum, and since MSNBC hosts had the pole position in the uprising, that’s understandable.

Former GOP chair Ronna McDaniel gets fired twice. (Photo: NBC News)

But their loud objections caused their boss — remarkably —  to do a 180-degree turn, and rescind his hiring of ousted Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a political contributor.

McDaniel managed to get fired by Donald J. Trump and NBC News within a few weeks. She may belong in the Guinness record book. 

At NBC News, the inmates had won, right-wing critics screamed.

On the other hand, the employees who are NBC News refused to share their space and their “good name” with a woman who had vilified the network, repeatedly lied to the media, and engaged in election denial with her endorsement of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged. They said she was culpable.

NBC News reportedly was going to pay her $300,000 a year for two years for her insights. Now, McDaniel reportedly will sue their asses off for breach of contract. If the contract was signed, sealed, and delivered, no doubt she will get a golden parachute.

Let’s be clear that NBC News is not “muzzling” her. This is not a First Amendment issue, this is not about freedom of speech. McDaniel is free to speak to anyone who wants to listen.

It pains me a bit to side with MSNBC, which invents its own rules of journalistic ethics. For instance, it refuses to cover public addresses by former President Trump, who is the Republican candidate for president.

I am not saying it has to cover all of them. MSNBC brags it will cover none.

Why? 

Because he lies, explains MSNBC’s most popular anchor, Rachel Maddow.

And Joe Biden doesn’t?

Not as often as Trump, but he lies. Political speeches usually are a roll call of exaggerations and half-truths.

And, not for nothing, MSNBC gave a show to Biden’s press secretary. Jen Psaki, who routinely massaged the truth for her boss. 

There’s an adage — from the days when print was king — that warns never to get into an argument with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

That meant that print will have the last word.

Today, it is television and —   God forbid — social media. 

MSNBC can have the last word after Trump makes a speech.

It can diagram every paragraph he mutters, fact check, and expose. Every time he opens his mouth you find more bullshit than in a stockyard.

And it can dissect him honestly, without having to resort to distortions about him claiming there will be a “bloodbath” if he is not elected. (In case you missed it, he was referring to the auto industry falling to Chinese competition.) 

The staff had a right to complain about the hire. And by rising en masse, there was little risk. NBC News couldn’t fire everyone.  

The hiring of McDaniel certainly went against MSNBC’s openly anti-Trump brand. Seeing her pontificate might have alienated the network’s core audience.  

Anyway, after the staff insurrection, NBC News Group Chairman Cesar Conde humiliated reversed himself and said McDaniel would be dropped. It was a mere 80 hours from hiring to firing. 

“After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor,” Conde said in a memo, adding that he wanted to “personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down.”

Republicans pounced, saying NBC won’t offer opposing opinions.

Let’s look at that.

NBC does, but MSNBC almost never does. When it puts together a panel, members range from Moderate Left to Loony Left. In contrast — and some will hate hearing this — every Fox panel contains at least one sacrificial lamb liberal member.

Does MSNBC offer Republicans time on its air?

Yes, like former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, former Vice President Mike Pence, former RNC Chair Michael Steele (who also has an MSNBC show). They are Republicans — but they are all anti-Trump Republicans.

To give Conde the benefit of every possible doubt, maybe he wanted to recruit a pro-Trump person to appear on NBC’s platforms. There’s always two sides to a story, right? Sometimes even more.

Here’s the problem:  Is it possible to find any pro-Trump person who will not regurgitate Trump’s lies?

Probably not.

NBC needn’t pay to be lied to. If the network really wants that pro-Trump point of view, it can find lots of people who will do it for free — like whack job Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance. 

Opposing views should be aired, and you don’t have to pay 300 Grand to hear them.

34 thoughts on “Why MSNBC inmates forced boss to drop GOP’s McDaniel”

  1. I’m for the old 1/2 hour of network news.. No need for 24 hours of ranting idiots

  2. The American people can see how dishonest and unfair the main stream media and Democratic Party are. Is this the country I grew up in. I would never believe the free press in this country would silence the opposition and not be fair and tell both sides. I hope people wake up and pay attention. The far left democrats are controlling the media and the Democratic Party.

    1. And far right Conservatives control the Republicans and Fox News are fair and balanced?

        1. You’re right. The other night my wife, Taylor Swift, and I were just talking about this.

  3. [Here’s the problem: Is it possible to find any pro-Trump person who will not regurgitate Trump’s lies?]

    Indeed, therein lays the problem. And if one were to opine that one side is offering to dismantle Democracy (just listen to Trump’s words, NOT any pundit’s), then do we REALLY need to bring “both-side-ism” into this?? At this point, you are looking at a Republican Party (in name only) that is neither Conservative nor rational nor doing ANYTHING to help the average American, and should not the media be reporting things exactly the way they are rather then lumping the old Orange Fuckwad into the category of “just another politician?” He clearly is NOT that, at least not to anyone who is actually listening to the drivel that consistently emerges from his filthy pie hole.

    And don’t give me any of that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” bullshit, either. Trump is the one who is obviously deranged, and people like me calling that fact out does not make US deranged. We are simply calling them as we see them, and I see a lying jackal/criminal/dope with fake orange skin and a bad hair piece. Someone like me eschewing something that is obviously evil does not make me a hater. Hatred of hate itself is NOT hatred.

    Don’t like it? I don’t care.

    3. Apart for me being a journalist (or maybe because of it) I would always err on the side of freedom of speech, and to deny coverage to (the leading) candidate for president, who got the vote of 74 million Americans, is reprehensible.
      You can’t claim to be defending democracy by denying it, and that goes for Democrats’ attempts to keep RFK Jr off the ballot.
      I am for neither Trump, nor RFK, as you know, but they must be treated fairly.

      1. The democrats are exposing themselves as corrupt and dishonest. They claim to believe in democracy yet try to deny the rights of anyone who opposes them. I wish the old time liberal democrats would wake up and see that their party has been taken over by the far left.

      2. Where does it say in the Constitution that the media is required to cover both sides of a story? Trump has plenty of outlets he can use to speak, including Trump Social. You show your bias when you write an article about bicycles, when are going to cover both sides?

          2. I don’t know the answer to the bicycle question. Because I don’t know what he’s talking about. Maybe Bogart knows because he’s as loony as Judah.

          3. Danny I would tell you to go fuck yourself but I am sure you would be disappointed.

        2. Not in the Constitution. As I WROTE, the violation is of journalistic ethics, but I know it is hard to read when your head is up your ass.
          Nor was the issue free speech. As for bicycles, you mutt, I almost always — 10 columns out of 14 — quoted the Bicycle Coalition.
          And as a columnist, I was not even required to. But that’s how I roll.

      3. Does being treated fairly mean letting them say what they want to or can it be just examining the lies and what they portend? I think the Russian press does the former rather well.

        1. I clearly stated that after Trump gets to speak, MSNBC gets the last word to analyze, reveal and criticize the lies. And they can take all day to do it.

  4. A very scary precedent, no matter how you try to justify it, Stu. I’m astonished by the reneging of the hiring because the employees objected. Why then is there a need for a CEO or president to make hiring decisions?

    1. So if you hired an employee with a past history of lying and breaking the law. What would you do if employees as a collective group spoke against that decision?

  5. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here
    Never mind the weather
    Here we are together!
    Freeze, Keith Barger, Wanda, H. Bogart, and the newest left-wing lunatic, Judah, all to gang up on Daniel.
    Brings to mind “A Confederacy of Dunces” contemporized.

    1. Stude you may not be the dumbest person alive, but you better hope that Daniel does not die.

  6. The people who hired Ronna Romney McDaniel should have the grace to resign. She is and was a liar whose position as head of the RNC was to try to get Republicans across the board elected. Well, I don’t think she ever really did that so she was lousy at her position. It looks like all here previous jobs were obtained through nepotism. She was a mouthpiece for a single individual; a huckster selling bibles, perfume, steaks, sneakers, wine and god knows what else. You’d have to be a diehard MAGA believer to shell our money for any of these 2nd rate products.
    Either she just wanted to be close to power or she bought the Kool-Aid. So does hiring her bring any perspective other than Trump’s to any conversation? I think not and it was a lousy hire.

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