Coop Scoop: NBC News Prematurely Joins The Trump Campaign

Why on earth hire RNC Chair McDaniel as a commenter?

March 25, 2024

By Marc Cooper

Sorry. Mr. Trump.  For at least this week you have been dethroned as the leading generator of hair-raising quotes and statements in America.  You have been temporarily brushed aside by the Senior Vice President of NBC News for Politics, Carrie Budoff Brown.  A refugee from the hack factory known as Politico, Brown was anxious to announce that she and NBC had hired none other than  recently deposed RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel (Romney) as a commentator for NBC News across all of its platforms. 

Said Ms. Brown in her official statement on the hiring:  “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.”   And Dewey beat Truman she forgot to add. There was also no clarification if McDaniel (who dropped her last name of uncle Mitt Roney so as to not offend the MAGA werewolves) would be speaking in English or would have a German interpreter.  Bad luck for Brown that Magda Goebbels is still not alive as her voice might also be quite useful in explaining this moment in American politics.

Given the history of the MSM, and of NBC who propped up and as much as invented the magnate image of Trump as it kept his atrocious Apprentice show on the air for 14 very long years, this is not a surprise.  No, it’s more of a shock.  It’s a pie in the face of the American electorate. More accurately it’s a defecation on your living room floor. it It is an insult even to lowly slugs and worms.

Why does NBC need McDaniel who has a long history of plumping for Trump, for disparaging all journalists (especially MSNBC), for declaring that Biden was not fairly elected, for not condemning Trump’s blessing of the convicted Jan6 Trumpanzees as hostages?  What is she going to do except what she always done: lie, spin and obfuscate in the service of electing an authoritarian party and its Great Orange Leader?  What to expect from a low performing bureaucrat than her infamous statement that the January 6 assault was “legitimate political discourse.”

Mother Jones runs the most succinct indictment of this dim bulb:

“McDaniel did more than shill for the president. She played an important role in public and behind the scenes in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—and with it, two and a half centuries of constitutional governance. That should be a clear red line for employers in the truth-telling business… McDaniel pushed to delay the certification of the presidential results in Michigan, and helped the Trump campaign assemble fake electors, a key part of its plot to throw the Electoral College certification into chaos. This is not standard-issue party-chair stuff. This was a historically dishonest conspiracy. And it is hardly a secret to anyone: As Media Matters noted on Friday, you can read about a lot of this at NBC News itself.”

The move by NBC went over like Hitler’s Bar Mitzvah for much of the network staff.  Rashida Jones, chief of MSNBC, was quick to denounce the hiring and to vow that McDaniel would not be showing up at any time as a guest on the liberal cable channel.  Jones also reportedly phoned several of the key MSNBC anchors to personally reassure them they would not be forced to share air time or a TV stage to interview McDaniel. 

Even good old Chuck Todd, always ready to side with Power, chided his own network in a Meet The Press panel discussion after McDaniel appeared on the network show Sunday morning. "Our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation," he told MTP anchor Kristen Welker. “There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” he said. Todd added: “You got put into an impossible situation, booking this interview, and then all of a sudden the rug was pulled out from under you, and you find out she's being paid to show up? It’s unfortunate for this program, but I am glad you did the best that you could.”

Welker, not exactly among the most outspoken or combative of journalists gave her own meek disclosure on-air saying: “This interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor,” Welker said. “This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.”

Welker will probably have to take a weeklong break to recover from such a courageous outburst and denunciation.  She, of course, did obediently conduct the interview instead of refusing and forcing an internal crisis in NBC that, I am guessing, would have resulted in Brown getting booted, not Welker.  But Welker is no gambler so she did her duty a she does every week in the Todd tradition of not trying really trying to upset anybody.  Next up in this drama will be that boring stiff, known as Lester Holt, who soon enough will have to decide if he wants McDaniel on his NBC network nightly news show. After all, he’s pitched as “America’s Anchor” though I don’t think he was ever elected to that post by the American people.

I want to be clear about one thing. I don’t have a problem with NBC or anybody else presenting a diversity of political views.  You want to have a wide range, fine with me.  But FFS, choose people who are bright, honest, play in good faith, and can make reasonable arguments without demonizing others. Somebody who can offer real insights and not unfiltered bullshit. What we do not need are professional propagandists, bootlickers and opportunists who will continue to spew garbage in any venue they are placed.

I don’t know if genius Ms. Brown and the rest of the NBC nomenklatura have yet figured this out, but this is NOT a normal election.  This is a vote being held under a very real threat of a robust anti-democratic movement and in which one of the two candidates is leaning ever more forcefully into a dictatorial posture. And one in which the media has already soiled itself several times. Why the compulsion to continue doing so?

You want commenters that can really contribute to the public discourse at this existential moment?  Great!  How about lining up some social psychologists who can explain to us how half the country falls for a criminal and sub-verbal cult led by a liar with 88 felony counts pending? Or how about a few historians who can recount how fascism took hold in the 1930’s and whether or not we are really headed in the same direction.  How about a real media critic or two who can explain the symbiotic relationship between the American media and the American ruling class?

The decision by NBC and the insulting happy talk from a deplorable hack like Budoff Brown are a watershed moment in American journalism. It is a premature and unconditional surrender to the anti-democratic proto-fascist forces now struggling to gain state power.  I would anticipate this surely after a Trump victory, but before it? If the neo-fascists win, maybe they can return the favor and appoint Carrie Budoff Brown as Minister of Truth and Propaganda.  They’re the same thing, anyway, right?

 They certainly are to the the former Ms. Romney  McDaniel. ++

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