“I know you won’t be surprised to know that we’ve been inundated with calls this weekend, as have most people connected with this network about NBC’s decision to hire her,” co-host Joe Scarborough declared at the top of Monday morning’s broadcast.
“We learned about the hiring when we read about it in the press on Friday.” The Morning Joe hosts “weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons,” Scarborough continued.
According to the former GOP congressman, the main point of contention was the ex-RNC chair’s “role in Donald Trump’s fake elector scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone.” Scarborough’s co-host and spouse Mika Brzezinski further lashed out at NBC bosses, contending that the overriding issue with McDaniel was her credibility—not her ideology.
Additionally, the Morning Joe co-host urged the network to quickly reverse course and part ways with McDaniel.
“To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage.
But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier,” Brzezinski fumed.
“And we hope NBC will reconsider its decision.
It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on Morning Joe in her capacity as a paid contributor.” Morning Joe wasn’t alone in speaking out on Monday.
Nicolle Wallace, a former George W. Bush spokesperson-turned-MSNBC host, spent much of her late-afternoon program lambasting McDaniel’s hiring as a potential threat to democracy itself.
“We’ll talk about what it means for democracy when companies, especially those in the business of news, add self-described election deniers to their payrolls,” she sighed.
Reading from Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny, Wallace noted that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given” before wondering if that now applied to her own network.
“In this instance, NBC News is either wittingly or unwittingly teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches way beyond our air, which McDaniel did yesterday on Meet the Press,” Wallace said.
The open revolt by MSNBC’s flagship morning show and one of its most popular opinion hosts comes a day after NBC News political director Chuck Todd scathingly rebuked network brass on-air just moments after McDaniel wrapped up her first official network appearance on Meet the Press.
Todd also expressed sympathy for his Meet the Press successor Kristen Welker, whom he felt was put in an “impossible situation” by the network.
“Our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation,” Todd told Welker, adding: “There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this.
Because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination.” Todd also said that Welker had “the rug pulled out from under” her because she only found out a couple of days before the interview that McDaniel was “being paid to show up,” something the Meet the Press editor explicitly noted at the top of Sunday’s broadcast.
“This interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor,” she flatly stated.
“This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.” During the interview itself, Welker pressed McDaniel on her previous support for Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, prompting the former RNC head to label Joe Biden the “legitimate” president.
At the same time, McDaniel said, “It’s fair to say there were problems in 2020.” Besides turning to Snyder and MSNBC contributor David Jolly to criticize NBC News for “normalizing” McDaniel and “autocracy,” Wallace on Monday also heaped praise on Todd over his condemnation of the network.
“He did something really brave,” she asserted.
“I talked to him yesterday.
I said I’m knitting you a cape!” The on-air denouncements from some of the network’s top hosts and journalists will undoubtedly put pressure on other MSNBC personalities to speak out on the issue in an effort to force their bosses’ hand and nix McDaniel’s contract, which is reported to pay the ex-RNC chief $300,000 a year.
The former RNC chair’s comfortable NBC salary, amid sweeping layoffs in the newsroom, is also a point of contention among network staffers.
“Across MSNBC they have been cutting contributors,” one host told Politico Playbook.
“So everyone’s like, what the fuck?
You found 300 for her?” However, much of the problem appears to lie with the lack
alongside Donald J. With just a few days left to obtain a nearly half-billion dollar bond in his civil fraud case, a New York appeals court gave the former president a lifeline on Monday by stating that it would accept a much smaller bond of $175 million.
This important and unexpected win for Mr. Trump may have prevented an impending financial catastrophe. The decision was made by a panel of five judges on the appellate court. Mr. Trump would have run the risk of losing control over his bank accounts and possibly even some of his most prestigious properties if the court had turned down his request for a smaller bond in the fraud case, which was filed by the attorney general of New York.
Those grim consequences may be postponed for the time being. In the event that Mr. Trump receives the smaller bond, the attorney general will not be able to collect while he files an appeal of the $454 million judgment against him. It might take months or more to settle the appeal in the case where the trial judge determined that Mr. Trump had falsely inflated his net worth.
Dear Mr. Trump has ten days to get the bond, and according to two people with knowledge of his finances, he should be able to, even though it will take up a significant amount of his funds. Obtaining the bond requires Mr. Trump to pay a fee to an outside company and pledge approximately $200 million in cash and other investments as collateral. The bond is a promise from the outside company to cover his judgment if he loses the appeal and is unable to pay.
