On Monday, some unhappy commentators at NBC publicly expressed their unhappiness with NBC… on NBC.
Apparently, some people at NBC who get paid a lot of money to attract viewers to the legacy broadcasting company determined that not enough Republicans were tuning in to the “news and opinions” programming, maybe because the “news and opinions” staff was mostly left-wing Commie pinkos.
(I may be dating myself, using a vintage term like “Commie pinkos”. The more modern term is “Democrat”.)
The uproar from the existing news staff resulted from an announcement that NBC had hired Ronna McDaniel as a political commentator, for a six-figure salary. Which, I suppose, could just as easily mean $100,000 or $999,999.
Meanwhile, folks like myself, who typically get their news from the weather report, didn’t even know that Ronna McDaniel existed. Ronna who? We certainly didn’t know that she had been the chair of the Republican National Committee, or that she had been fired from that position, earlier this month, by Donald Trump.
“Asked to resign” by Donald Trump. That’s a more polite way to say it.
So I guess she was looking for a job? Maybe a six-figure job? That’s what I would do, if I’d been fired by Donald Trump. I would look for a job with a Commie pinko news organization.
It probably didn’t help matters that Ms. McDaniel (not to be confused with Stormy Daniels) had been known for claiming that the 2020 election was stolen. That’s the type of claim sure to offend the left-wing news commentators Ms. McDaniel would have been working with.
Reminds me of a Biblical story.
McDaniel in the lions’ den.
Actually, the pinko lions were mostly the hosts on NBC’s cable affiliate, MSNBC. Ms. McDaniel was hired on Friday. On Monday, a string of pundits — including Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Joe Scarborough, Lawrence O’Donnell and Jen Psaki — protested the decision.
And they protested the decision on air… on their shows.
“NBC News is, either wittingly or unwittingly, teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air and interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections,” Ms. Wallace said on her show Monday afternoon.
“Our democracy is in danger because of the lies that people like Ronna McDaniel have pushed on this country,” Ms. Psaki said during MSNBC’s 8pm hour.
I found those quotes on the Washington Post.
That was on Monday. On Tuesday, the leadership at NBC announced that they had changed their minds, and they weren’t actually going to hire Ms. McDaniel.
How does it feel, I wonder, to be fired by the extreme right and the extreme left, in the same month?
Not good, apparently, because on Wednesday (that’s today) we learned that Ms. McDaniel plans to sue NBC for
From Newsweek, an article titled, ‘Ronna McDaniel Will Sue for ‘Mental Distress’ Over NBC Firing, Friend Says”:
Ronna McDaniel, a former Republican National Committee chairwoman, plans to take legal action after NBC News fired her, according to conservative political commentator Hugh Hewitt…
“I have never seen anything this brutal since I got started in media in 1990. Ronna is going to sue everyone who defamed her for breach of contract, for intentional infliction of mental distress. They are going to sue for the destruction of her business opportunities that come from being on TV,” Hewitt said, while on air.
Of course, journalists like myself are probably not making things any easier on Ms. McDaniel, publishing stories like this about the potential infliction of mental distress — intentional or not — by NBC. You would think a big company like NBC would know better than to intentionally inflict mental distress on someone who was recently fired by Donald Trump.
A small-town journalist like myself would not, however, be expected to know better.
Donald Trump himself weighed in on McDaniel’s termination on Truth Social, suggesting that she deserved her fate at the hands of the network’s “Radical Left Lunatics.”
“Wow! Ronna McDaniel got fired by Fake News NBC. She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear.”
Apparently, Ms. McDaniel had changed her tune, from claiming the 2020 election was stolen, and said (on air) that Biden won the 2020 election “fair and square” — during a Meet the Press interview on Sunday.
I can’t imagine which hurts more. Getting fired by NBC after four days on the job — even after her “fair and square” comment — or getting criticized by Donald Trump on Truth Social.
Talk about mental distress.
Maybe Ms. McDaniel could sue Donald Trump, too? Everyone else seems to be doing it.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.