NBC's McDaniel mess threatens to explode

The uproar inside NBC over Ronna McDaniel's hiring spilled into Monday morning as more of the network's top personalities denounced the deal with the former RNC chair, escalating a battle over the relationship between powerful media companies and Donald Trump's loyalists.

The decision to hire McDaniel, which was unanimously supported by top network executives, has already divided and destabilized one of America's most storied news organizations, with internal dismay flaring on text chains and Slack channels since the deal was announced late last week.

The dissent broke into the open Sunday when the network's top political analyst, Chuck Todd, pilloried executives moments after McDaniel’s first network appearance, an interview with Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.”

“There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this," Todd told Welker, citing prior "gaslighting" and "character assassination” from McDaniel's RNC.

Some at “Meet the Press” knew in advance that Todd was privately upset about the decision, but the show's team did not know the extent to which he would criticize it on air, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Todd expanded on his comments Monday, writing on X: “The issue isn’t about ideology, it’s about basic truth. Those trying to make this a left-right issue are being intentionally dishonest. This is about whether honest journalists are supposed to lend their credibility to someone who intentionally tried to ruin ours.”

The on-air protests represent what could be a seminal moment in political media as news organizations continue to grapple with how to responsibly represent voices from the Trump right on their screens and in their pages without handing their platforms over to election deniers or bad faith actors who have attacked and attempted to discredit their own reporters.

“We weren't asked our opinion of the hiring but, if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons,” Joe Scarborough said Monday at the top of “Morning Joe,” MSNBC's flagship morning broadcast, with co-host Mika Brzezinski adding, “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.”

They then played a reel of McDaniel’s various comments questioning the outcome of the 2020 election.

Network insiders are now watching to see if other hosts and contributors speak their minds, as well, with eyes particularly peeled for MSNBC’s prime-time lineup Monday, where tent-pole anchor Rachel Maddow is set go live at 9 p.m.

It's yet unclear whether the NBC-McDaniel relationship can survive the uproar. It was forged last year when NBC executives wooed her to land a Republican presidential debate, a high priority at the network. CNN had beat NBC in the race to host a Trump town hall, and securing a debate took on extra significance.

Through that process McDaniel built a good rapport with NBC News executives Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of politics, and Rebecca Blumenstein, president of editorial. They secured a deal, at a price: McDaniel insisted MSNBC could not simulcast the debate.

After McDaniel announced last month she would leave the RNC, she signed with CAA and went looking for a TV contract. While in talks with other networks — she had serious discussions with CNN and ABC — NBC always had the inside track. “Ronna had a good experience with Carrie and Rebecca and felt more comfortable than with some of the other networks,” a person close to McDaniel said.

The McDaniel deal was unanimously supported by leaders of all their networks, according to an NBC insider, including by Rashida Jones, president of MSNBC. The internal backlash began on Friday morning after Budoff Brown sent an email announcing that McDaniel would appear “across all NBC News platforms.”

That sent panic through MSNBC, prompting Jones to tell employees that there were no plans to have McDaniel on the network, as The Wall Street Journal first reported. The NBC insider clarified to Playbook that there was no ban on McDaniel at MSNBC and that the cable network’s shows can use McDaniel as they see fit.

Interviews with executives, hosts, correspondents, and producers in the wake of Todd’s public excoriation revealed a breakdown in trust and communication among the company’s balkanized and ideologically fractured divisions.

To start, there is the message sent by hiring McDaniel on a nearly $300,000-a-year contract amid a growing sense inside the Washington bureau that Comcast sees its news division, which has been subject to recent layoffs and other cuts, as a divisive nuisance to be stripped down.

"Across MSNBC they have been cutting contributors," said one of the network’s hosts. "So everyone's like, what the fuck? You found 300 for her?"

And then there is the deep resentment of journalists who weren’t consulted about a critical election-year hire that was sure to attract criticism. “Meet the Press” and “Morning Joe” are the two main forums for political contributors, but the hosts of those shows weren’t asked for their opinion.

McDaniel was booked on “Meet the Press” while she was negotiating her contract but Welker knew nothing about it until Thursday night, a day before the public announcement. Scarborough and Brzezinski weren’t consulted at all.

“No hosts or correspondents were given any kind of heads up on this,” said one person familiar with the situation. “People are pissed. It is a deeply unpopular move.”

If they had been consulted, several NBC political reporters said they would have told their bosses that McDaniel was not the prize they thought she was.

Their argument: McDaniel’s has no juice with the anti-Trump wing of the party. (A niece of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), she removed "Romney" from her name, while Nikki Haley voters think she put her thumb on the scales for Trump during the primaries.) McDaniel is not especially close to GOP leaders in Congress. And if the point is to give NBC viewers more insight into Trump world, then why turn to the person whom Trump just ousted from the RNC?

The Trump campaign was quietly celebrating Todd’s evisceration of McDaniel yesterday. (Asked for comment, a top Trump official said, "Of course I want to" gloat online. “I just don’t think my doing so moves any votes our way. It’s this whole ‘disciplined campaign’ thing.”)

NBC insiders, meanwhile, cited a host of factors that contributed to the breakdown that led to McDaniel’s hiring: New York executives disrespecting Washington journalists; newer NBC executives with a print background — Budoff Brown (formerly of Politico) and Blumenstein (formerly of the NYT) — disrespecting TV talent; and NBC News disrespecting MSNBC.

The miscommunication extended to NBC’s dealings with McDaniel. She was originally under the impression that yesterday’s appearance would be part of her rollout as a new NBC contributor rather than the confrontational grilling it turned into.

“How could the top brass be negotiating this and then not let Kristen Welker know she may be doing her interview with a paid contributor?” the person close to McDaniel asked in astonishment. “Usually contributors weigh in on this or that issue, not, like, answer these brutal questions for 20 minutes.”

But it was Todd’s outburst Sunday that crystallized the turmoil. It was in some ways the culmination of years of frustrations, laid bare by someone who had been at the center of much of it.

Todd spent a decade in the "Meet the Press" chair and suffered so much vitriol from anti-media attacks — on both the right and the left — that NBC regularly hired private security for him. There was internal criticism, too: By the end of his tenure, the show was being micromanaged by executives, and he’d clashed throughout with colleagues at MSNBC as he did much of the frustrating work trying to distinguish the non-ideological NBC News from its ideological cable cousin.

But he won over that crowd yesterday.

“The fact that he took it upon himself to not only say this, but, frankly, to defend the woman who took his job, is pretty remarkable,” said a colleague. “He got a lot of attaboys from NBC News and MSNBC, including from people who are not prone to give him much credit.”

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CLARIFICATION: This report has been updated to clarify the circumstances surrounding the advance knowledge “Meet the Press” staff had of Chuck Todd’s critical comments about NBC executives.