The Republican National Committee chair turned NBC politics analyst Ronna McDaniel “enabled criminality and depravity” in her support for Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the former congresswoman Liz Cheney said as controversy swirled over McDaniel’s media role.
“Ronna facilitated Trump’s corrupt fake elector plot and his effort to pressure Michigan officials not to certify the legitimate election outcome,” Cheney, a Republican who was vice-chair of the House January 6 committee, wrote on social media.
“She spread his lies and called January 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’. That’s not ‘taking one for the team’. It’s enabling criminality and depravity.”
McDaniel rose in Republican politics as a member of the powerful Romney family before reportedly dropping the name at Trump’s behest and becoming RNC chair in 2017.
In February 2022, the RNC said Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the other anti-Trump Republican on the committee that investigated the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, were engaged in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse”.
Cheney lost her seat in Congress that year. Kinzinger chose to retire. McDaniel was eased out of the RNC last month, to be replaced in part by Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law.
McDaniel’s NBC role was announced last week. On Sunday, she appeared on Meet the Press, the flagship politics show.
Characterising her support for Trump’s election fraud lies as “taking one for the whole team”, she said she did “not think violence should be in our political discourse” and that Biden won “fair and square” – but still claimed it was “fair to say there were problems [with battleground state elections] in 2020”.
A former Meet the Press host, Chuck Todd, issued an on-air protest.
“There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” he told the current host, Kristin Welker, “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.”
Monday brought proliferating reports of staff discontent – and its open expression by two of the network’s biggest names.
On Morning Joe, the MSNBC show that often sets the Washington agenda, co-host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said: “We’ve been inundated with calls this weekend, as have most people connected with this network, about NBC’s decision to hire” McDaniel.
“We learned about the hiring 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 Donald Trump’s fake elector scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone.”
Scarborough’s wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, said: “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. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on Morning Joe in her capacity as a paid contributor. Here’s why.”
There followed a compilation of McDaniel’s comments about the 2020 election, which Brzezinski called “exhausting”.
Later, the host, Nicole Wallace – once White House communications director for George W Bush – told viewers NBC had, by hiring McDaniel, “wittingly or unwittingly” told election deniers they could spread Trump’s lies on “our sacred airwaves”.
One of Wallace’s guests, Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of the book On Tyranny, said: “What NBC has done of its own volition is bring into a very important conversation about democracy, one which is going to take place for the next seven months or so, someone who … tried to disassemble our democracy. Who personally took part in an attempt to undo the American system.”
NBC, Snyder said, was making an “adjustment in advance” of a possible Trump victory: “So yeah, I think this is pretty bad.”
As observers waited to see what primetime stars including Jen Psaki and Rachel Madow might say on Monday night, disquiet was also reported over McDaniel’s reported $300,000 deal.
“Across MSNBC they have been cutting contributors,” an unnamed host told Politico. “So everyone’s like, what the fuck? You found 300 for her?”
Later on Monday, the union group NBC News Guild, said on social media: “Two weeks before NBC News proudly announced the hiring of Ronna McDaniel, execs illegally terminated 13 union journalists.”
No explanation was offered for the layoffs, the Guild said, adding: “Actions speak clearly – NBC prioritised an election denier over its own reporters.
“Ronna encouraged a lie that many of our own journalists have spent countless hours debunking. Our journalism is tarnished by … executives elevating a liar over the workers who have spent years delivering the kind of reporting that our newsrooms are typically known for.”
NBC did not comment, nor did McDaniel.
