NBC News’ decision to rent Ronna McDaniel, former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as a political commentator has sparked a wave of sharp criticism from her recent colleagues in recent days. Top executives at NBC and its cable cousin, MSNBC, including Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow, took the bizarre step of publicly condemning their bosses’ decision.
Internal critics say that by hiring Ms. McDaniel, the network authorized election denial. In the times after the 2020 election, Ms. McDaniel promoted false theories promoted by then-President Donald J. Trump, including that votes were miscounted in key battleground states, and helped pressure election officials in a single county of Michigan to refrain from voting to certify the outcomes. She has since tried to downplay her role in questioning the integrity of the election, and on Sunday on “Meet The Press” she said President Biden defeated Trump “fair and square.”
Many major news organizations do that he focused on internal tensions on NBC. But many conservative commentators took a special toll on the network’s uproar, saying it showed how NBC News journalists are overwhelmingly liberal and intolerant of conservative views.
Fox News
In one episode, after clips played on the air by which Mr. Todd and MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski described their opposition to Ms. McDaniel’s hiring, panelists on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” expressed disbelief on the response.
“If someone said that on Fox News, they would be asked out the door,” said Bill Hemmer, the show’s host.
“I was really disappointed to hear Chuck Todd, a journalist, comment on it that way,” said Kayleigh McEnany, co-host of Fox’s “Outnumbered” who was White House press secretary under Trump. “Who on your network, NBC or MSNBC, represents the 46.7 percent of the country that polls say the RealClearPolitics average supports Trump?”
“The liberal media can’t stand the idea of having a different point of view on their air,” said Jeanine Pirro, host of “The Five” on Fox. Ms. Pirro then identified that MSNBC and NBC commentators had not opposed the network’s 2011 hiring of Michael Steele, one other former RNC chairman.
Bill O’Reilly
On NewsNation on Monday, former Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly said Ms. McDaniel “made a huge mistake” in attempting to persuade Michigan voters to not certify the 2020 election results.
But he said she was still being paid unfairly for the choice and that her Sunday claim that Biden actually won the 2020 election must have been enough for the network’s talent to just accept her hiring.
“It’s not good enough for NBC,” O’Reilly said. “It must be canceled. It must be evaporated, it must disappear.
Newsmax, Breitbart and National Review
Newsmax, a website promoting false theories about the 2020 elections, covered response to Ms. McDaniel’s hiring in a news article that described the MSNBC hosts as “scorched earth” on the former RNC chairman.
Breitbart, a conservative news site, focused on Ms. Maddow’s reaction to Ms. McDaniel’s hiring, calling the host’s monologue about Ms. McDaniel a “rant.”
The conservative magazine National Review, which has at times expressed opposition to Trump, pointed out that MSNBC employed many hosts who held prominent positions in the Biden administration.
“There was no such outrage when MSNBC brought in former White House press secretary Jen Psaki and former Kamala Harris communications staffer Symone Sanders,” certainly one of them plot he said.
