So, I shook my head in disgust last week at MSNBC's decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst for the upcoming election season; my disgust was not because she is a Republican—I once was a moderate member of the GOP many years ago—but because McDaniel is an election denying, journalism dissing Republican who backed a scheme to keep then President Donald Trump in office back in 2020.
Ronna McDaniel
As we get further away from the events that occured in December of 2020, back when Trump filed 62 lawsuits to challenge his loss to Joe Biden—and lost 61 of those in quick order, it seems that some have forgotten (or are willing to overlook) those who embraced such dangerous folly, folks like McDaniel and her push from her perch as head of the GOP to overturn the Michigan electoral results in real time—all the while trashing the mainstream media!
As the former president and some of his lawyers/advisers are now facing criminal charges relating to their roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election, while those cases receive due process, I think that it is important for uncharged co-conspirators, like McDaniel, to not be "normalized" in the public square by planting them front and center on this year's election coverage.
Thus, my applause for those on-air MSNBC personalities who used their platforms to question their bosses dumb decision to bring an election denying (unindicted) criminal conspirator into the fold. One of my favorite MSNBC hosts, Joy Reid, said on air that "We welcome Republican voices; the reality is: this isn’t a difference of opinion. (McDaniel) literally backed an illegal scheme to steal an election in the state of Michigan.”
Facts...
Ol’ Hobbs after chatting with MSNBC's Joy Reid last year in Tallahassee
Star host Rachel Maddow further chided the bosses by saying, "Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call. It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong."
More facts...
Last, Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski averred, "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.”
Amen!
After the traditional and social media backlash, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde finally issued a statement that held, “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. Over the last few days, it has become clear that this (McDaniel) appointment undermines that goal.”
You think?
Sarcasm aside, with Mr. Conde's stroke of the pen, Rona McDaniel lost the $300,000 per year contract that she had just signed less than a week earlier! My response to her speedy exit? "Sic Semper Tyrannis," Latin for "Thus, ever to Tyrants.”
Now, I know that some conservatives will retreat to the worn out smear that McDaniel is the latest victim of "liberal cancel culture," but such a statement fails to acknowledge that fair, balanced, and independent media are critically important foundation blocks in any democracy. By independent I do no mean to suggest that news organizations cannot have an ideological bent—they can! But there's a difference in saying that this host or that writer is a progressive or a conservative, as opposed to saying that this host or that writer has struck a Faustian pact with the Trump (or Biden) campaigns.
Trump and McDaniel were joined at the hop both during his administration—and afterwards…
McDaniel cannot make any legitimate claim of being independent because she was front and center in a conspiracy that threatened the peaceful transfer of power in this nation for the first time since the Civil War. More crucially, she has shown no remorse whatsoever for her role in purveying the poppycock that Donald Trump was "robbed" by a "rigged" election; to that end, her comment on Meet the Press last Sunday that Joe Biden “won fair and square” is too little, too late.
Lest we forget!
Bye, arrivederci, au revoir, adiós, see ya, Verabschiedung, don't let the door hit ya, Sayōnara...what ever language! GET OUT!
The upper management damaged their own brand by focusing on market economics and not integrity. I don't think this will be the last we hear of this. It was unbelievably tone-deaf.