Posted in: NBC, Opinion, streaming, TV, TV | Tagged: morning joe, msnbc, NBC News, opinion, ronna mcdaniel, trump

Morning Joe Anchors Hope NBC News "Reconsiders" Ronna McDaniel Move

MSNBC's Morning Joe co-anchors Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski are hoping NBC News "reconsiders" its decision to hire Ronna McDaniel.

The folks over at NBC News aren't exactly rolling out the red carpet for their new "teammate," ex-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel  – and with good reason. A day after it was announced that McDaniel had joined NBC News as a voice on NBC, MSNBC, and NBC News, MSNBC president Rashida Jones notified the network's staff that McDaniel would not be haunting their halls anytime soon. It's understandable, considering we're talking about a person who's been known to blame the media for everything that ex-reality show host & multi-impeached ex-POTUS Donald Trump did during his one term – including calling the mainstream media "corrupt" & peddling "fake news" while also peddling 2020 election conspiracy theories and accusing MSNBC of "spreading lies" and its evening lineup of being "primetime propagandists."

On Sunday, McDaniel would get called out on a number of issues during an interview on Meet the Press with moderator Kristen Welker – in what appeared to be an effort on McDaniel's part (with NBC News' blessing since it's their airwaves) to retcon her political past. Shortly after, Chuck Todd, former Meet the Press moderator and NBC News' chief political analyst, would join Welker and proceed to call out the network for its move and the question marks around it that still remain unanswered. That brought us to Monday – and we can now add MSNBC's Morning Joe co-anchors Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski to the list of folks not joining "The Ronna McDaniel Fan Club" anytime soon.

"We learned about the hire when we read about it in the press on Friday. We weren't asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons, including, but not limited to, as lawyers might say, Miss McDaniel's role in Trump's fake electors scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone," Scarborough shared with viewers. Noting that "it goes without saying" that McDaniel will not be a guest on the morning show as a paid contributor, Brzezinski added, "To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier, and we hope NBC will reconsider its decision."

On Sunday, Todd joined Welker on the Meet the Press post-interview panel, complimenting the host on doing "a good job of exposing, I think, many of the contradictions" in what Ronna McDaniel had to say – adding that "I think our bosses [NBC News] owe you an apology for putting you in this situation." From there, Todd didn't mince words when it came to expressing his issues with the deal, his understanding of why members of NBC News are taking issue with the hiring, and his concerns that McDaniel will end up benefitting from the deal more than NBC News -and the viewers – will.

"She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract. She wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for her. So she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself, or is she speaking on behalf of who's paying her?" Todd said. Later, Todd dug deeper into the feelings among the network's news division. "Look, there's a reason why there's a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination. That's where you begin here. And so, when NBC made the decision to give her NBC News' credibility, you gotta ask yourself, what does she bring NBC News? And when we make deals like this, and I've been at this company a long time, you're doing it for access, access to audience, sometimes it's access to an individual."

Todd went on to address how Ronna McDaniel could've been brought aboard NBC News in a different capacity that would've been easier to defend and would've given the news division credibility distance from McDaniel. "If you told me we were hiring her as a technical adviser to the Republican Convention, I think that would be certainly defensible. If you told me we're talking to her but let's let's see how she does in some interviews and maybe vet her with actual journalists inside the network to see if it's a two-way, what she can bring to the network. Unfortunately, this interview is always going to be looked through the prism of, who is she speaking for?" In the end, Todd sees the move to hire McDaniel as one that will leave the network the lesser for it: "I don't think it's going to bring the network what they think it wants to bring to the network. I understand the motivation, but this execution, I think, was poor."

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!