NBC News backtracks- "When somebody does the right thing, it should be acknowledged"

NBC News reads the room, does the right thing, and cuts ties with Ronna Romney McDaniel...good riddance to bad rubbish

Yesterday and Sunday, I wrote pieces in which I, like many people, was highly critical of NBC News for hiring former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Eva Braun Ronna Romney McDaniel.

Then, around dinner time last night here on the West Coast, the news came that NBC News had un-fucked things by cutting ties with Ms. Braun Romney McDaniel.

Certainly, NBC News senior management screwed the pooch by hiring Ms. Romney McDaniel in the first place. To their credit, they listened to the outcry from their employees and did the right thing in handing her her walking papers.

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC News cut ties Tuesday with former Republican National Committee chief Ronna McDaniel less than a week after hiring her as an on-air political contributor, a decision that followed a furious protest by some of its journalists and commentators.

In announcing the decision in a memo, NBC Universal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde apologized to staff members who felt let down by the hire, acknowledging he had signed off on it.

“No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal," Conde said. But he said the network remained committed to centering “voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.”

There was no immediate comment from McDaniel, who stepped down as RNC leader just over two weeks ago. She found out she lost her job through media reports, not from NBC directly, said a person close to her who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn how Ms. Romney McDaniel reacted to the news of her firing. She should consider herself fortunate that she hasn’t been indicted for her role in the alternate electors scheme Donald Trump and his fawning acolytes tried to pull off.

I’m not going to shed tears for someone so thoroughly devoid of integrity and whose word is utterly worthless. As I mentioned yesterday,

Her problem is that she can’t escape her past, which stands out for its criminality and amorality.

As Lawrence O’Donnell says, he’d first ask her why she changed her name for Donald Trump. Why did she go from calling herself Ronna Romney McDaniel to Ronna McDaniel when she became head of the Republican National Committee (RNC)?

As if we didn’t already know the answer to that question. Trump hated her uncle, Mitt Romney, just that much, and so she willingly gave up that part of herself for her political career. Who does that?

Someone with no soul or moral center does that. It’s also how she can go from claiming that the 2020 Presidential election was unfairly rigged and enabling Donald Trump’s immoral delusions to working for a news network she once demonized.

It was a money grab for Ms. Romney McDaniel. What else could it have been? She’d spent her tenure as Chair of the RNC demonizing NBC News as “fake news,”…and now that NBC was waving a $300k/year contract at her, she suddenly had a change of heart.

How convenient….

But, as I’d warned yesterday, the Far-Right is firing up its grievance machine as only it can do:

And there was more, of course, as if on cue….

Republicans countered that the protest indicates that people at NBC News, particularly at MSNBC, were unwilling to countenance opposing viewpoints. The hiring, and quick firing, represents one of those rare instances likely to unite the left and right — in anger.

“NBC caving in to the censors,” Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter, posted on his platform.

But there were also those ecstatic that NBC had done the right thing:

“A trial run for appeasing an authoritarian regime.” Timothy Snyder knows from authoritarianism; in this case, I think he’s spot on. I think there may well have been an element of NBC News wanting to cover its bases in case Donald Trump wins in November. It’s difficult to know what their thought process may have involved and how hiring Ronna Romney McDaniel might have insulated them from adverse effects. Why else bring on someone so extremely and divisively partisan unless you were trying to have your cake and eat it, too?

The sad thing about Ms. Romney McDaniel is that she rarely misses an opportunity to mention that she’s a mother. So how does a professional liar square that with the lessons she teaches her children? How does she teach her children the importance of honesty, integrity, respect, and treating others as you’d wish to be treated? How can she model that behavior to her children when she never does it in public?

If being a mother is so important to her, how can she rationalize being such a miserably dishonest and disrespectful human being? How does she justify being such a mean-spirited and dishonorably partisan person? How can she expect her children to learn behavior and attitudes that she doesn’t display professionally?

Ronna Romney McDaniel will undoubtedly land on her feet with Fox News or a Right-wing think tank. No one should think she or her family will be living under a bridge in DC any time soon…though if they were to be, that might teach her some sorely needed compassion and perspective.

Perhaps NBC News management will learn a thing or two from this public relations debacle, though no one should hold their breath on that count. The good news is that management was forced to listen to the outrage of their employees, respected journalists with large audiences willing to listen to what they have to say. Their principled, measured anger and well-argued outrage rang true and ultimately couldn’t be ignored by those in the C-suites at 30 Rock.

So, score a few points for common sense and reason…at least this time. But, if this was a trial run for appeasing an authoritarian regime, it may only be the beginning, and the challenge may lie in how loud and long those who stand for decency, free speech, and common sense will (or are able to) continue the fight.

Stay tuned. This may have only been Round One.

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