NBC’s Ronna McDaniel Problem Exposes A Deeper Trump Challenge For Cable News

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

To paraphrase the singing nuns of Sound of Music, how do cable news executives solve a problem like Donald Trump?

NBC News brass has learned the hard way that the answer is not hiring ex-RNC chair and election denier Ronna McDaniel as a contributor, a move that prompted broad backlash and somewhat performative on-air condemnations from major stars like Joe Scarborough and Chuck Todd.

At any other time in the history of cable news, hiring the former head of the RNC or DNC would prove a no-brainer. A coup, no pun intended, for any news network worth its ratings. MSNBC, despite its liberal audience, boasts a number of ex-Republicans on staff, including Michael Steele, the former RNC head who co-hosts a weekend program on the network.

But these are not typical times. While Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election and has the fervent support of roughly 25-30% of the nation, he and his minions are pariahs within the world of establishment media.

From NBC’s perspective, the network needs voices who can explain Trump and Trumpism to viewers — not as David Attenborough ogling a gorilla from 800 yards, but as someone who understands and respects the movement.

Finding Trump-sympathetic voices has been a consistent headache for all cable news networks; it’s made even harder given how few former officials do not have the blood of Trump’s stolen election lies on their hands. Say what you will about networks hiring ex-admininstration officials; George Stephanopoulos, Dana Perino and Jen Psaki did not try to help steal an election their guy lost.

Ronna McDaniel did.

She wrote a letter, along with the Michigan GOP, asking the state to delay the certification of the election results by two weeks (which drew a scathing rebuke from the state of Michigan.) The January 6th committee revealed she was asked by Trump to “assemble” fake electors. She declined to tell Steve Bannon that 2020 was a legitimate election. And as recently as just last year, McDaniel refused to tell CNN’s Chris Wallace that Joe Biden was elected legitimately.

In her first appearance on NBC News for a bruising interview with Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker, McDaniel defended her promotion of election lies by insisting she was merely “taking one for the team.” In other words, she knew it was all bullshit but acted as a loyal servant to the leader of the Republican Party, truth be damned. That “truth be damned” part is why NBC News rank and file are apoplectic over the decision to pay her a reported $300,000 a year for her political analysis.

Fury over the hiring is so acute that the Wall Street Journal is already reporting McDaniel won’t appear on MSNBC. Then, on Sunday, ex-Meet the Press host Chuck Todd called out his own network on air, providing the sharpest take on why McDaniel’s hiring was so problematic within a network that sees itself as dedicated to journalistic standards:

When NBC made the decision to give her NBC News credibility, you got to 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. And we can have a journalistic ethics debate about that. And I’m willing to have that debate. And 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, 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 thing and what she can bring to the network.

So I do think, unfortunately, this interview was always going to be looked through the prism of who is she speaking for? I think you did everything you could do. You got put into an impossible situation booking this interview, and then all of a sudden, the rug pulled out from under you. You find out she’s being paid to show up.

Morning Joe offered their own rebuke of NBC on Monday morning, slamming the network for hiring an “anti-democracy election denier.”

Of course, McDaniel is not a journalist; she’s a partisan like any other political operative. Donna Brazille, Michael Steele, Tom Perez, and every other chair of a political national committee also fall in the same category. There is a distinction here, however, and it’s a reason the blowback NBC is getting isn’t entirely unfair: None of those politicos sought to help a president overturn a free and fair election.

Indeed, some conservative media critics have put forth the braindead argument that McDaniel’s hiring is no different than NBC tapping Psaki, former press secretary to President Biden. It is completely different; to argue otherwise is to be poisoned by the partisan assumption that Trump is just another ordinary president.

Trump is not ordinary. He is not like his predecessors or his successor. He is distinct in his mendacity and the disgraceful way he left office. Those who tried to help him remain in office should face far more scrutiny than those who did not.

(And no, Fox News doesn’t get a complete pass for hiring former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who, like McDaniel, also irresponsibly sowed doubt about the 2020 election results but got out of the Trump camp not a moment too late. This isn’t a partisan thing — it’s an honest broker thing.)

Look, I am a big believer in dialogue across partisan divides as a means of healing a broken body politic. And the performative pearl-clutching over this hiring inspires a bit of an eye-roll. But they are right. McDaniels has no business being near a news outlet as a paid analyst. A guest on air? Sure, but not on the payroll. The decision to hire McDaniel despite her diminished reputation and zero buzz surrounding her appearances raises legitimate questions about decision-making at NBC News’ highest levels, but that’s a column for another day.

The irony here is that if the past is prologue, Ronna McDaniel would have eventually evolved into a successful MSNBC talking head in the same way that Scarborough, Steele, or Nicolle Wallace found successful careers on the left-leaning network. She clearly will say whatever the people who pay her want her to say, and after a few years on MSNBC, she’d likely turn into Trump’s biggest critic.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.