MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow has joined a growing list of NBC journalists and on-air personalities who have criticized their network’s decision to employ former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and has urged NBC to reverse its “inexplicable” hiring.
In her opening monologue on Monday, Maddow first excoriated McDaniel for aiding Donald Trump’s “strongman” ambitions, including by telling GOP canvassers in Michigan to not sign a certification of the 2020 election results, as The Detroit News reported late last year.
“We have had a lot of these guys, but our generation’s version of this guy has gotten a lot farther than all the rest of them,” Maddow said, in reference to the former president.
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“And why is that? He would have been as forgotten as all the rest of them had he not been able to attach himself to an institution like the Republican Party and had the leader of that party… decide that she would not just abide him, she would help. She would help with the worst of it,” Maddow said.
“And so I want to associate myself with all my colleagues both at MSNBC and at NBC News who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government,” she made clear.
McDaniel’s hiring was “inexplicable,” Maddow went on, comparing it to a member of the mafia working in a district attorney’s office or a pickpocket being hired as a TSA screener at the airport. “I hope they will reverse their decision.”
The longtime MSNBC anchor also noted that McDaniel’s hiring comes at a crucial time.
“In the news business, yes, we are covering an election, which we do all the time, but we’re also covering bad actors trying to use the rights and privileges of a democracy to end democracy,” she said. “The chief threat among them now is not the rioters and the kooks, but the slick political professionals who are turning their considerable talents to laundering violently revolutionary claims that… America’s election results aren’t real and they shouldn’t be respected.”
Maddow wasn’t the only primetime MSNBC host who spoke out against McDaniel joining the network payroll.
Earlier in the night, Jen Psaki contrasted her transition from White House press secretary in the Biden administration to cable news host with McDaniel’s hiring, and called out her “lies” about the 2020 election as being about “service to one man” as opposed to “service to the country.”
Psaki said she wanted to respond to how some—“mainly in the right-wing ecosystem”—have mentioned her own move from government to the Fourth Estate in the same breath. “That is a comparison I felt like I had to address,” she told viewers.
“I got into public service for the same reason that many people do: to serve the American people. I worked on my first political campaign when I was just 24 years old. When I was 28, I packed my bags, I moved to Chicago to work for Barack Obama,” Psaki began. “He wanted to make the country a better place and I wanted to help them. I wanted to work on behalf of the American people to try and make their lives better. That’s why I did campaigns, and a few years later, I would do the same thing for President Biden when I went to work for him in the White House.”
Psaki held various communications roles in the Obama administration, and later served as Biden’s press secretary from Inauguration Day until May 2022. Later that month, MSNBC announced it had hired Psaki as a contributor. Inside with Jen Psaki premiered on the network last March.
Pskai said her experience—being “in the room for tough debates, difficult decisions, the messy and, at times, incredibly grueling process of governing”—is “something that I am extremely proud to bring to this table and this network, and there are many others who have followed a similar path who I have a great deal of respect for.”
“But here’s the thing,” she added. “That kind of experience only matters and only has value to viewers—all of you—if it is paired with honesty and with good faith. Those qualities are especially important right now at a time when our institutions are under attack and when our democracy is in danger. And our democracy is in danger because of the lies that people like Ronna McDaniel have pushed on this country.”
“Look, this isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats. This isn’t about red versus blue,” Psaki concluded. “This is about truth versus lies—service to the country versus service to one man committed to toppling our democratic system. That is the type of experience that Ronna McDaniel brings to the table, and that experience does not get us to a deeper understanding of anything in the public debate.”
Fellow MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell closed out the night by weighing in on the matter during the 10 p.m. hour with succinct advice for his network: “Don’t hire anyone close to the crimes.”
