Amid a chorus of on-air protest from some of the network’s biggest stars, NBC announced Tuesday night that former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel will no longer be joining the network as a paid contributor.
In a memo, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde told staff that he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”
Ronna McDaniel
The network had only just announced four days earlier that they were bringing McDaniel on board to provide “expert insight and analysis” on politics. “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” one NBC News executive told staff at the time.
But the company’s on-air personalities — especially those on NBC’s liberal-leaning cable affiliate MSNBC — disagreed vehemently, saying that McDaniel’s promotion of former president Donald Trump’s media-bashing and false election-fraud claims disqualified her from a role in their news divisions.
And one by one, they took to the airwaves to deliver that message to their bosses in front of their live audiences Monday.
“Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call,” MSNBC’s top-rated star Rachel Maddow said on her show that night. “It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong.”
NBC delivered the news of its course correction to its employees before informing McDaniel, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve confidence.
Maybe the bosses should have consulted with their employees before hiring a proven liar and insurrectionist.
Jim Rutenberg and Alexandra Berzon at The New York Times: How Ronna McDaniel Backed Trump’s Early Bid to Hold Power.
By the second week of December 2020, the presidential election was decided and heading to a formal vote at the Electoral College. Like President Trump, the Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, wasn’t ready to concede.
“Every illegal vote is stealing from a valid vote, and every state that conducted their election fraudulently is stealing from states that conducted their elections fairly,” Ms. McDaniel told Sean Hannity of Fox News on Dec. 8.
At the time, key campaign aides had already told Mr. Trump that he had lost. Advisers had found no credible evidence of fraud or irregularities that could have reversed the outcome. The Electoral College would confirm Joseph R. Biden was the winner six days later.
Yet, Ms. McDaniel’s appearance on Mr. Hannity’s program was part of her concerted efforts to help Mr. Trump dispute his election loss….
Ms. McDaniel had recently tried to downplay her role. But a review of her record shows she was, at times, closely involved in and supportive of Mr. Trump’s legal and political maneuvering ahead of the violent attempt to block Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.
Ms. McDaniel was not the most aggressive or outlandish member of Mr. Trump’s team. Indeed, she fell short of Mr. Trump’s demands and expectations, former aides said, and faced calls from his allies and grass-roots activists to be far more aggressive. And her involvement appears to have fallen off substantially — at least publicly — in the days before Jan. 6, when the R.N.C. focused its efforts on the then-upcoming Senate runoff election in Georgia.
Later, after courts, Republican election officials and state investigations all dismissed Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud, Ms. McDaniel was viewed as insufficiently dedicated to the cause of overturning the election, particularly by the Trump supporters who still considered Mr. Trump the rightful winner.
But before then, Ms. McDaniel, who through intermediaries declined to comment for this article, had done more to dispute a legitimate election result than any other chair of a major American political party in modern history.
Ronna McDaniel with Trump
The authors break down McDaniel’s actions in detail. Some examples:
The party set up hotlines, collected accounts of supposed suspicious activities and held meetings at the White House with Mr. Trump’s legal team, Ms. McDaniel later testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
At a news conference in Michigan on Nov. 6, the day before news outlets declared Mr. Biden the winner, she announced that the R.N.C. was deploying legal teams in four states to investigate “irregularities.” She listed allegations in Michigan that she claimed were evidence of potential, widespread problems, including supposedly suspect election machine software. The allegations were disputed by election officials and later debunked.
Speaking on Fox on Nov. 10, Ms. McDaniel repeated unsubstantiated and soon-to-be debunked claims of “deceased voters” and “batches of votes that were invalidated,” declaring, “that is stealing.”
And on social media, Ms. McDaniel questioned “irregularities” about the election, posted fund-raising solicitations and promoted hearings in states where Mr. Trump’s allies presented bogus evidence of election malfeasance. She vowed that the R.N.C. would “pursue this process to the very end.”
After Mr. Trump switched his legal team, bringing in outside lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the R.N.C. also shifted away from the legal involvement with the Trump team. Of the 65 lawsuits that Mr. Trump and his allies filed after the 2020 election, the R.N.C. attached its name only to four, according to Democracy Docket, which tracks the cases.
Still, on Nov. 19, Ms. McDaniel allowed Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell to hold a press briefing at R.N.C. headquarters. With dark liquid dripping down his face, Mr. Giuliani promoted wild theories about Dominion voting machines and the deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez….
After that news conference, party lawyers told Ms. McDaniel not to repeat the conspiracy theories about election machines, and urged R.N.C. aides to be careful when speaking about the election, suggesting they use phrases like “voting irregularities” rather than “voter fraud,” according to House committee testimony….
On Nov. 17, two Republican members of the canvassing board in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, initially voted against certifying the county’s results, deadlocking the board until they reversed themselves amid angry protest.
Immediately afterward, the Republican board members, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, received a phone call from Mr. Trump; Ms. McDaniel was also on the line.
Believe it or not, there are many more examples of McDaniel’s dishonest actions in the NYT story.
Trump has now taken over the Republican National Committee and is hiring staff who will support his big lie without question. Josh Dawsey at The Washington Post: Was the 2020 election stolen? Job interviews at RNC take an unusual turn.
Those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee after a Trump-backed purge of the committee this month have been asked in job interviews if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring.
As the general election kicks off this spring, however, those calls have quieted—because Biden’s resurgence is coming into focus. While the president still faces serious obstacles to a second term, several important data points are lining up to demonstrate he is picking up badly needed momentum.What are your thoughts on all this? What other stories are you following?
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Sky Dancing 
Have great Wednesday everyone!!
Hello Skydancing!
Boomer and I bumped into each other on that godforsaken Xwitter. So I thought I would stop by to say Hi and tell you that I admire your fortitude and tenacity that keep your blog going this long. Unlike myself, you crapped out.
Hope you are all well.
*Waves to Boston Boomer….
P.S. I meant “Unlike myself WHO crapped out. Now I will go try to find that marble I lost…..
Uppity! Hello! I stopped by your blog not long ago (it’s been dog’s years since the time before that) and saw that you’d stopped updating. Sad, but also too understandable. I go weeks, sometimes months, between having anything to say on my blog. It’s all very Oh-what’s-the-use. Side effect of everything going to hell in a handbasket, I think.
Hey Quixote! Hope all is well with you and, yes, I Get It. A combination of frustration and health issues resulted in burnout. Either that or maybe. like you said, I had nothing more to say. I admire any active bloggers like Skydancing who date back as far as I have and even farther. It’s hard work.
thank you for such an informative post BB…listening to the WH briefing on the bridge collapse…it is going to be a long time before this is cleaned up and fixed.
Thank you.
I’d like to know how a parolee is able to do this kind of shit?
The headline about Repubs worrying about a “skeleton” campaign is, to me, the funniest thing all day. What did those gumballs <em>think</em> was going to happen when they gave the Orange Dump the keys to the money? Have they no sense of priorities? Number One: Trump. Number Two: Trump’s legal fees. Number Three: Trump’s legal fines, bonds, whatever. I mean, what else is there??
Exactly.
So, so, so sad about the casualties in the bridge disaster. It’s amazing how low that number was, but still awful that it wasn’t zero.
HEALTH Longtime Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader Krystal Anderson dies after giving birth Krystal “Krissy” Anderson died shortly after giving birth to a stillborn daughter.
In an interview with Kansas City Fox affiliate WDAF, Clayton Anderson said that his wife spiked a fever after their daughter was stillborn. He said that she battled sepsis, which led to organ failure and three surgeries.
“I feel lost,” Clayton Anderson said. “There’s a lot of people in this house and it feels empty.”
Sepsis is when the body responds improperly to an infection, causing the organs to work poorly, according to Mayo Clinic. Sepsis may progress to septic shock, with blood pressure dropping and damaging never organs that can lead to death.
Black maternal mortality rates have long been high in the United States. Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In February, Dr. Jessica Shepherd, an OB-GYN at Sanctum Med + Wellness in Dallas, said that to reduce the Black maternal mortality rate, “There needs to be a fundamental change in the actual foundation of health care systems. That would be (addressing) insurance coverage, that would be (increasing) access to resources and tertiary care hospitals or systems that are in food desserts, underprivileged areas.”
Additionally, OB-GYN Dr. Chavone Momon-Nelson said studies show that people who are treated by doctors who look like themselves have better outcomes.
My daughter had signs of sepsis before they induced her labor. Every time I read these stories I just get chills and teary. Women deserve better.