Talking heads on NBC News suffered an on-air meltdown Sunday over the network’s recruitment of former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel to offer occasional commentary. This, after MSNBC awarded President Joe Biden’s former press secretary a prime-time show.
NBC announced last week that Ronna McDaniel would be joining the network’s lineup of political analysts following her resignation as chair of the RNC. Her first appearance came Sunday with an interview on “Meet the Press” hosted by Kristen Welker, who opened the 20-minute sit-down discussion with an over-the-top disclaimer about McDaniel’s new gig.
“In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel had become a paid NBC News contributor,” Welker said. “This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.”
Welker’s predecessor on NBC’s flagship Sunday political program, Chuck Todd, who remains NBC News’ chief political analyst, told Welker she deserved an apology from network executives.
“Let me deal with the elephant in the room,” Todd said on a “Meet the Press” panel. “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.”
“There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” Todd continued, “because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting.”
Jen Psaki, however, spent the first year and a half of the Biden administration gaslighting Americans before she signed a contract with MSNBC, the 24-hour cable arm of NBC, which, according to The Wall Street Journal, “has no plans to have McDaniel on the channel.”
Prior to joining MSNBC, Psaki defended President Biden from behind the White House press podium by deflecting blame for rising gas prices and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. She also lied to D.C. reporters about federal coronavirus spending, tried to rewrite history on Democrat demands to “defund police,” and promoted the White House censorship regime as it attempted to suppress inconvenient information.
McDaniel’s hiring, however, provoked a backlash at the same network.
“I don’t think it’s going to bring the network what they think it wants to bring to the network,” Todd said after spending years peddling the Russia hoax. When the narrative that Trump was conspiring with Russia to steal the 2016 election was exposed as a deep-state conspiracy, Todd defended the federal intelligence apparatus by writing off the credibility of those eager to hold the Department of Justice accountable.
[READ: After FISA Abuse, Chuck Todd Thinks DOJ’s Problem Is Too Much Accountability]
Meanwhile, Welker, who spent the segment nodding along as Todd blasted the network, has become a surrogate for the Democrat Party’s radicalism on abortion. In an interview with former President Donald Trump last year, Welker lied repeatedly about the party’s abortion platform, with false claims that the deadly practice is often necessary to protect the life of the mother.
Stephen Hayes, another NBC News analyst on the Sunday panel complained that McDaniel “not only presided but directed and drove the ‘Qanonization’ of the Republican Party during her tenure.”
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