Ronna Romney McDaniel- "You wouldn't hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener"

Rachel Maddow and others at MSNBC eviscerate their employers for hiring Ronna Romney McDaniel despite her lack of integrity and credibility

“Elections are fraudulent here, anyway….”

That was the message that Ronna Romney McDaniel sent to Trump supporters around the country in the aftermath of the 2020 election. As the Chairperson of the Republican National Committee, she led the effort to sow doubt about the veracity and integrity of Joe Biden’s victory. She supported the effort to create slates of alternate electors in swing states, and she spoke out loud and long to continually sow doubt in the minds of Americans.

Three years later, she was still at it, trying to create doubt, suggesting that there was something foul afoot in our electoral system and that Donald Trump DONE GOT ROBBED by “Sleepy Joe” Biden and those evil Dimmocrats!

Except that this had long since been settled. Anyone involved in the election, whether on a local, state, or national level, understood that, while no election is perfect, the 2020 election came close.

Besides, most of what little voter fraud occurred in 2020 was committed by Republicans, NOT Democrats.

Voter fraud was not an issue that came anywhere close to impacting the 2020 Presidential election, especially in the way claimed by Donald Trump and his legion of whacked-out Trumpkins. They wanted to believe he got robbed, and so they set out to find evidence to support their claims…even if, in the end, they had to invent it…which they did.

As mentioned by National Public Radio’s Domenico Montanaro on All Things Considered,

NBC News hired McDaniel as a conservative commentator at, by the way, a clip of $300,000 a year for a contract. But executives in New York apparently didn't consult with the journalists in the Washington bureau. A lot of those journalists would have told them that McDaniel doesn't really have much of a constituency. I mean, Trump allies don't like her very much, neither do never-Trumpers who have seen McDaniel as an enabler of the former president…. But mostly people are unhappy with her because of her past actions in election denialism. You know, she tried to strike a very different tone on NBC's "Meet The Press" yesterday, saying, for example, that the January 6 siege at the Capitol was, quote, "unacceptable" and that she disagrees with Trump wanting to pardon the rioters.

Of course, now that she's got a $300k/year contract, she has to change her tune and sound more conciliatory. 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. When you have no soul or moral center, you’ll work for whoever writes you the biggest check.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")

RONNA MCDANIEL: When you're the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right? This is what I believe.

MONTANARO: Well, and the problem is there that, as Chuck Todd - who, full disclosure, was my boss at NBC when I worked there - said on the show, what is it that exactly McDaniel believes now?

That’s precisely the problem. Even IF she were to come out and say that she believes the 2020 election was as pure as the driven snow, who’d believe her? Romney McDaniel has zero integrity and a helluva lot less credibility, so why would any rational person believe anything that comes out of her mouth?

More to the point, why would NBC pay her $300,000 a year when she has no credibility? MSNBC’s President has said she won’t appear on their air, and numerous MSNBC hosts have said they won’t have her on their shows. The criticism of NBC News FROM THEIR EMPLOYEES has been relentless, even from people like Chuck Todd, who’s not exactly known for taking tough stands.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

MCDANIEL: So many things that are causing uncertainty. And they used COVID as an excuse. And it was allowed to happen. And it is just wrong. And it is rigged. And it's wrong against the president. And it's wrong against Republicans. And...

CHRIS WALLACE: Are you saying, as the chair of the Republican Party, that you still have questions as to whether or not Joe Biden was the duly elected president?

MCDANIEL: Joe Biden's the president.

WALLACE: No, I didn't ask you whether he's the president.

MCDANIEL: No. I don't think that - I think there were lots of problems with 2020. I don't think he won it fair, I don't. I'm not going to say that.

The above is from a couple of interviews Romney McDaniel did with Fox News and CNN last year. So, roughly 30 months after the Presidential election, she’s still pushing the fantasy that Joe Biden stole the election. She’s still falsely questioning the integrity of the American electoral system and planting the seed among Trump’s supporters that the next time around, they may have to take matters into their own hands.

More succinctly, the head of one of America’s two major political parties spent the past three years sowing uncertainty about the integrity and honesty of America’s electoral system. She’s essentially said that if Republicans don’t win, the system is broken, and we may have to take action outside the system to seek justice.

And now she’s being paid serious coinage by one of the networks she demonized while she was the Chairwoman of the RNC?

WTactualF???

MONTANARO: So this is someone who was a former state party chair in Michigan who, after the 2020 election, pressured officials in that state not to certify results. When it came to Republicans who joined the congressional committee investigating January 6, she said that they had, quote, "crossed a line" and that Democrats with those hearings were persecuting, quote, "ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol." And now she wants to sort of I'll call it media wash her reputation, saying now that the violence at the Capitol was unacceptable.

She “pressured officials” in Michigan “not to certify results.” I’m not an attorney, of course, but that sounds like something that might have had Ms. Romney McDaniel on the wrong side of the law. If so, why isn’t she being prosecuted?

She also believes that the House January 6 committee was persecuting “ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”

Of course, I don’t know where she was on January 6, 2021. Perhaps she was behind the counter at the Capitol Gift Shop, well away from all the fun. And maybe she didn’t have access to a television, radio, or even a carrier pigeon. Or perhaps she was willfully ignorant of the fact that there was an insurrection taking place that day, one that claimed five lives, injured hundreds, and did millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol. Don’t even get me started on the human feces left behind in the Capitol by some of the insurrectionists….

Whatever hole in the sand Ms. Romney McDaniel had her head stuck in that day, how could she miss that what happened on January 6 was NOT “legitimate political discourse?” I’m sorry, but that’s just about the stupidest goddamn thing ever uttered by a human being.

That she would even insinuate otherwise is to insult the intelligence of good and decent Americans who watched the events of that terrible day unfold on their TV screens. It was an insurrection, an attempted coup…and we came very close to losing our democracy that day. To call it anything other than precisely what it was is cheap propaganda- a lie.

Now, Ronna Romney McDaniel wants to let bygones be bygones, to which

Jeff Tiedrich

says, fuck that…and I couldn’t agree more. I’m all for forgiveness and second chances, but when you’ve spent three years sowing doubt about our electoral system and trying to destroy American Democracy…yeah, fuck that. There’s no coming back from that misghegoss.

And

Steve Schmidt

, while not exactly reveling in NBC’s disgraceful moment, doesn’t back away from it, either. He was kind enough to pass along something from the NBC Universal Academy entitled, “Why basic journalism standards matter”:

One thing that all news organizations truly need is a strong reputation that begets credibility, trust and faith in the entire organization. Maintaining our reputation, our integrity, our independence is a vital role. And to accomplish that we must adhere to our journalistic standards. 

These standards are the basis for our reporting, our newsgathering, our production. Whether broadcast, cable, streaming, digital, social media — all of our journalists follow the highest of standards. We have one huge responsibility to our audience: to get it right.  

If we keep doing that, reputation intact, all else will follow. 

Credibility. Trust. Faith.

We have one huge responsibility to our audience: to get it right. OMFG, this feels like an awful Dennis Miller joke, doesn’t it?

No, this is not a comedy show, y’all. This is a news network’s version of lack of self-awareness writ large—VERY large.

While it was significant that MSNBC heavy hitters weighed in with condemnations of their bosses’ ham-handed hiring of Ronna Romney McDaniel, it was even more significant that two of NBC’s weakest journalists, Chuck Todd and Kristin Welker, also hopped on board.

There’s undoubtedly much more to this story, and more that will come to light over the coming days and weeks. Yes, reasonable people can and should hope that NBC News will come to its senses and send Ms. Romney McDaniel packing, but that will only mean an intense Sturm und Drang as the Far-Right screams, “CANCEL CULTURE!!”

Whatevs. Let them have their moment if it makes them feel anything less than their usual impotence.

But wouldn’t it be nice if, for once, someone faced reality, did the right thing, and admitted they screwed the pooch? Sure, mistakes get made; we’re all human, and we all fuck up from time to time. I’ve done it in this space, and I’d like to think I’m brave enough to own up to my mistakes.

In NBC’s case, I hope someone will recognize the monumental cock-up in hiring Ronna Romney McDaniel. Apologize, write her a check, send her off into the sunset, and then try to salvage what credibility you can and learn what lessons there are to learn from this sorry saga.

We have one huge responsibility to our audience: to get it right. Hahahahaha…fuck that.

All of my posts are public at this time. Any reader financial support will be greatly appreciated. There’s no paywall blocking access to my work (except for a few newsletters), but that remains an option down the road. I’ll trust my readers to determine if my work is worthy of their financial support and at what level. To those who do offer their support, thank you. It means more than you know.