


MSNBC’s top primetime hosts Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday night lashed out at NBC’s decision to hire former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel as a contributor, joining several of their high-profile colleagues who have called out the controversial hiring on air.
FILE PHOTO: Rachel Maddow joined her colleagues in criticizing NBC News decision to hire former RNC ... [+]
During Monday night’s broadcast of her weekly primetime show—MSNBC’s top-rated—Maddow first called out McDaniel’s history of election denialism saying the former RNC chair has been “pitching in” and falsely implying the 2020 election “wasn’t right…that vote wasn’t real.”
The host then said she wanted to join her colleagues at both MSNBC and NBC News, who have objected to the network’s decision to hire McDaniel.
Maddow said she has been informed McDaniel will not appear on the cable network, adding that while MSNBC’s leadership “did not object” to the controversial hiring by their sister network, other staffers “unanimously and instantly expressed outrage.”
Maddow said she hopes the network’s leadership will “reverse their decision.”
On his show, The Last Word, host Lawrence O’Donnell called McDaniel a “Trump liar” and said if she ever decides to appear on his show, he would ask her about her decision to drop Romney from her name: “How does that feel, to change her name to curry favor with the madman because he doesn’t like your uncle (Mitt Romney)?”
The primetime host added that there was an “easy way” to avoid the controversy NBC News has found itself in—“don’t hire anyone close to the crimes,” adding “that’s what happened to the Nixon gang, the only comparable predecessors to the Trump gang.”
“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. Someone who still is trying to convince Americans that this election stuff, it doesn’t really work,” Maddow said during her monologue.