Will Ronna McDaniel’s loyalties lie with journalism — or Trump?
‘From Nixon Aide to kuralt’s Co-Anchor.” that was the headline on the New York times story from 1981 that reported that Diane Sawyer, who had worked in the white House press office during Richard Nixon’s second presidential term and then after his resignation followed him to San Clemente, where she helped him write his memoirs, would be joining veteran newsman Charles kuralt as coanchor of CbS’s morning newscast.
Sawyer went on to become the first woman correspondent on “60 Minutes” and anchored major news programs on two networks. in 2014, when she stepped down as host of AbC world News, she was praised by her bosses for her masterful interviews and “curiosity, passion and energy.” of course, i’m not suggesting that Ronna McDaniel, the ousted chair of the Republican National Committee, who was recently hired by NbC, is the next Diane Sawyer. but the door between politics and broadcast journalism has been revolving and evolving for a long time. McDaniel is just the latest poster child for that phenomenon, although she certainly pushes the envelope way past CNN’s controversial hiring of Corey lewandowski, whose tenure as the manager of Donald trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was marked by his hostility toward journalists, including an incident in which he was accused of assaulting one. He was later cleared of those charges.
In the Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop writes that “the appropriateness of the revolving door between politics and paid punditry — and who gets to pass through it — is a legitimately thorny question that i won’t get into here.” but to Allsop, the specific question of whether McDaniel’s hiring by NbC crosses the line is an easy call: Yes, it does. As he puts it, for McDaniel’s “deep complicity in trump’s election denialism” the only appropriate media standard is “zero tolerance” — not “a gilded contributor contract.”
That makes Jan. 6, 2021, the dividing line for deciding whose commentary is considered worthy of respect from viewers and worthy of compensation from major media outlets. As a recent New York times piece noted, being able to choose democracy over insurrection has made a rising star out of Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former communications director for trump, who is now a cohost of AbC’s “the View” and a regular commentator on CNN. it’s all possible because on Jan. 6, Farah Griffin directed a tweet to “Dear MAGA” that said “the Election was Not stolen. we lost.” Now, as the times reported, she gets to wear a hot pink Dolce & Gabbana suit and banter with “Van Jones, David Axelrod and other liberal commentators.”
On one hand, Jan. 6 is a reasonable dividing line between those who are rewarded with the opportunity to banter with liberals on cable tV and those who aren’t. the assault on Capitol Hill by trump supporters was an assault on democracy, and so were the actions by political operatives like McDaniel to aid and abet trump’s election denialism. that goes miles beyond whatever lies were told by Nixon loyalists in the effort to cover up watergate, and in the end, Nixon’s decision to resign was an affirmation of the underlying principle of democracy — that the country was more important than any individual leader.
But playing the devil’s advocate for a moment: if McDaniel is now willing to speak truth for a price as a pundit, why shouldn’t NbC pay for it? thanks to tough questions from “Meet the press” host kristen welker, McDaniel delivered more truth during that interview than she had in the past four years. She admitted trump “absolutely wanted me to move aside” as head of the RNC because she allowed primary debates he did not want. She said the violence on Jan. 6 was “unacceptable” and called it “a dark day in our history.” Asked about trump’s pronouncement that he will pardon those convicted for their participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection, she said, “i don’t think we should be freeing people who violently attacked Capitol Hill.” while she continued to insist that she doesn’t think trump wanted the attack to happen, she condemned it. She also said president biden won the 2020 election “fair and square.”
During the post-interview panel discussion, veteran NbC anchor Chuck todd said McDaniel has obvious credibility problems and he doesn’t know what to believe when she speaks. i say never underestimate the power of money to convince someone who was pushed out by trump that it’s now time to cut ties with the former president and the danger to democracy that he represents. McDaniel certainly has insight into the MAGA mindset, as well as into trump’s thinking as he plotted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. let’s see if she’s really willing to take on trump, like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, her uncle who voted twice to convict trump after his impeachment trials and whose last name she stopped using as part of her own at trump’s request.
As cynical as it might have been for NbC to hire McDaniel, her punditry still might have value for viewers, if she delivers the truth she was presumably hired to deliver. it shouldn’t take too long to find out where her loyalties lie — with journalism or with trump.