NBC News cuts McDaniel ties following an internal backlash
NEW YORK — NBC News has scrapped its plan to make former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel an on-air contributor to its political coverage.
“After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor,” NBC News Group chair Cesar Conde said Tuesday in a memo to staff.
The decision to reverse course comes after a stunning rebuke of the plan by the division’s on-air talent. On Monday, nearly every opinion host on NBC’s progressive cable news channel MSNBC blasted the hiring of McDaniel because of her defense of former President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
“The fact that McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News — to me that is inexplicable,” Rachel Maddow said on her MSNBC program. “You wouldn’t hire a wise guy, you wouldn’t hire a made man, like a mobster, to work in a DA’s office.”
The onslaught of internal criticism of McDaniel came immediately after the announcement Friday that she would appear on political coverage across NBC News platforms including MSNBC. (In a memo to staff, Carrie Budoff Brown, the senior vice president of politics for NBC News, said: ”It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.”)
The conflict is a major embarrassment for Brown and the other top NBC News Group executives who signed off on the $300,000 deal to sign McDaniel — mitigated somewhat by their willingness to drop out of the pact in less than a week after it was announced.
McDaniel appeared on the Sunday edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where moderator Kristen Welker pressed her on her positions regarding Trump’s continued belief that the 2020 election was stolen from him due to voter fraud.
McDaniel for the first time publicly acknowledged that President Joe Biden won the election “fair and square.” She also broke with Trump’s plan to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters who have been convicted and imprisoned.
But her credibility was questioned Sunday by former “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd in the panel discussion after Welker’s interview. The floodgates opened on MSNBC the following day.