NBC News should have seen this coming
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
excerpt
....Ever since Trump came to power, it has been basically impossible to find anyone with any integrity who can defend him or act as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party that he is the de facto head of. There was, for a short while, an attempt to find pundits and panelists who could act as his spin doctors after debates, elections, and other news events. CNN, in particular, filled its roundtables with loyalists like Kayleigh McEnany (who would go on to serve as Trump’s press secretary) and Jeffrey Lord (who was fired in 2017 after tweeting “Sieg Heil!”). Their efforts to spin Trump’s erratic behavior, xenophobic remarks and policies, and outright contempt for democracy were laughable—often literally so. Network and cable news spin rooms have never been places for nuanced debate or policy analysis, but they do require a shared sense of reality (even if that reality is one that only really exists inside the Beltway).
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Trump’s rise broke all of that. For most of the last five years, networks have adjusted their model somewhat, still balancing “liberal” and “conservative” voices but with the latter much more likely to be “Never Trump” figures (or at least Trump skeptics). The major flaw with this approach is that it undermines the entire model, which is premised on featuring people who can speak, with credibility, on behalf of the leaders of the two parties. That has become impossible in the wake of Trump’s emergence as the country’s single most powerful political force, thanks to the Republican Party’s growing contempt for journalists and Trumpism’s reliance on lies and bigotry.
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After January 6, 2021, there was clearly a hope that this would all just wash away, that Trump would recede from view and the GOP would return to being a normal(ish) political party. Not only has that not happened, but Trump is now leading in the 2024 presidential polls, creating a huge problem for mainstream news organizations: How do you cover a political party that has lost its mind? With McDaniel’s aborted hire, if you squint, you can see the logic. She spent seven years at the RNC as a Trump loyalist. Though there have been doubts—largely thanks to her connection to her uncle, steadfast anti-Trump conservative Mitt Romney—about her overall loyalty to MAGA, and she was ousted in a Trumpist coup, she has a more intimate understanding of the GOP apparatus under Trump than most conservative voices on mainstream news do. If you were in the market for a pro-Trump voice, she was, for better and mostly for worst, the best you were going to do. This is the “insider’s perspective” that Brown alluded to—and which Todd bemoaned in his evisceration of Brown’s decision-making, saying, “When we make deals like this … you’re doing it for access.”
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But there are two related problems with this apparent logic. One is that McDaniel has lost much of that access. She is no longer the chair of the RNC, and is seemingly persona non grata with Trump. She has, in fact, lost most of her credibility with Republicans of all stripes—too pro-Trump for Never Trumpers, not enough of a loyalist for the former president’s minions. Her tenure as RNC chair, moreover, was a political, legal, and moral disaster. The party’s finances are in a dismal state, and it has underperformed in a series of elections. The second problem is that McDaniel’s “insider’s perspective” is built on her recent access to a political party and a candidate who are increasingly contemptuous of both democracy and the rule of law. Her job for NBC would have been, quite literally, to defend the indefensible, whether it be Trump’s rhetoric on migrants or his increasingly open fascism.
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Shows like Meet the Press made more sense when the Republican Party was led by McDaniel’s uncle, as they rely on the presumption that the parties can both supply (relatively) good-faith operatives who can explain (or, more likely, spin) their positions on any given issue. With the GOP’s descent into madness under Trump, though, it’s no longer possible to find such people—the fact that NBC turned to someone who worked to overturn the 2020 election for the Trumpist perspective is proof of that. But it’s also further proof that any journalistic model that relies on juxtaposing talking heads from Team Blue with talking heads from Team Red is fundamentally broken. There’s no debate to be had over Trump’s fascist goals if he returns to the White House; no way that anyone could “spin” them to seem remotely reasonable. And even if there were a way, lord knows Ronna McDaniel doesn’t have the talent for it.
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This is why the MSNBC hosts would not accept a Ronna Mc Daniel.
Can you name ANY right wing or conservative contributor or host on MSNBC right now?
Is it true that they can't deal with any alternate views or opinions?
They shot themselves in the foot in many ways. Not only are they going to have to pay McDaniel a king's ransom, but although few Republicans watched MSNBC, there were Republicans who may have watched NBC. I think they lost audience as well as money.
Nothing says intolerant closed-minded bigot better than liberal progressive.
Most of them white liberals
And don't forget: $600,000 right now and a defamation suit to follow.
That is 500.00 a second for airtime, compared to the other talent on that station she may have been underpaid.
Ya, that is the spin of the network that lied about so many things.
Nobody is buying, John.
Nobody buying it? Ronna McDaniel got shitcanned! Didn't she? She shitcanned her own reputation lying for Trump...
So one person on the other side of the Biden/Trump coin as opposed to the dozens they already have lying and twisting the truth about Biden. Whether it be Bidens mental capacity, his shitty policies, his refusal to do anything about the border so he can try to blame it on Republicans and promoting Joes way to defend democracy is to end democracy.
Ah, the good old days when people that complained about work were showed where the door was. She may have increased the number of non looney tunes that watched the shows increasing ratings instead they bowed to the whiners. I am sure the stockholders were thrilled with the decision.
NBC lost it's credibility long ago, and doubled down on it's model as simply purveying the spin it's left wing audience wants to hear during the Trump years. Their contributors can start race riots, spread conspiracies and lie repeatedly without any issue, because they play for the Democratic team.
your pandering to trumpism has slipped its moors
this is really the crux of the issue