Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski began their Monday show by joining the chorus of internal dissent at NBC news over the hiring former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
Scarborough and Brzezinski aired their frustration with NBC, the sister network of MSNBC, for bringing on McDaniel as a paid commentator soon after she resigned from the RNC.
“We learned about the hiring when we read about it in the press on Friday. We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons,” Scarborough said. He cited McDaniel’s previous support for Trump’s lies surrounding the 2020 election.
“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 said. McDaniel will not be a guest on Morning Joe.
The comments came after NBC’s Chuck Todd attacked network executives on Sunday’s Meet the Press, arguing that Kristen Welker, who recently succeeded him as host of the program, was put in an impossible situation when she was made to interview McDaniel, who is now technically a colleague of hers.
“I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don’t know what to believe,” Todd said to Welker. “She wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for it. So she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with.”
During the interview, McDaniel broke with Trump on the issue of freeing the individuals serving prison time for participating in the January 6th Capitol riot. Trump has made freeing the January 6th “hostages” a centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
“I do not think people who committed violent acts on Jan. 6 should be free,” McDaniel told Welker. She acknowledged President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
“When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself,” she later admitted.
When she ran the RNC, McDaniel was a staunch defender of Trump and his agenda. Trump’s endorsement of McDaniel for RNC chair following the 2016 presidential election propelled her to the position.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison is among those opposed to McDaniel joining NBC. No such outrage existed when MSNBC brought on former White House press secretary Jen Psaki and former Kamala Harris communications staffer Symone Sanders.
MSNBC President Rashida Jones assured top network talent McDaniel would not be appearing on MSNBC itself after the New York Times reported that she would be, according to Semafor. Trump has threatened to go after MSNBC and NBC parent company Comcast if he wins re-election.