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#NBC hires former RNC chair #Ronna #McDaniel, who has 
demonized the press; and refused to acknowledge Biden was fairly elected
McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chair has repeatedly attacked the network and its journalists, assailed the news media as “fake news” and promoted false claims around the 2020 vote, as an on-air commentator ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” #Carrie #Budoff #Brown, 
senior vice president of politics at NBC News, said in a memo to staff.
An NBC spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about her attacks on the news media and NBC.
NBC’s hiring of McDaniel, however, plays into 
a recent trend at the network’s outlets, which has seemingly 
softened its stance on Trump as he inches toward the Republican nomination for president.
Earlier this month, 
CNBC hosted Trump for a lengthy phone interview in which the network’s anchors allowed him to peddle lies and conspiracy theories on air without scrutiny.
MSNBC has even started 
carrying Trump’s remarks live on television, a practice that the network boasted for years it would not do.
Star host #Rachel #Maddow, who has said carrying Trump’s lies on the air is dangerous, even objected to the network broadcasting a recent speech from the presumptive Republican nominee, calling it 
“irresponsible.”
McDaniel has a lengthy history attacking the progressive cable news channel MSNBC, on which she will appear in her new role.
In recent years, she has repeatedly attacked the channel for “spreading lies” and blasted those she described as the network’s “primetime propagandists.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/media/ronna-mcdaniel-nbc/index.html
During her time as chair, McDaniel repeatedly attacked the press,
-- an increasingly popular tactic in Republican circles over the last several years as Donald Trump demonized journalists and news institutions.
McDaniel echoed many such attacks, labeling the press as “fake news” and calling the media “corrupt.” At times, she even targeted NBC News and MSNBC with dishonest attacks.
In 2019, for instance, McDaniel accused Richard Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, of “actively cheering for an economic downturn.”
“How can NBC let him keep his job when he’s made his bias so clear?” McDaniel asked.
#NBC News was hit with widespread criticism for hiring former Republican National Committee chair #Ronna #McDaniel as a commentator.
McDaniel will make her debut Sunday on "Meet the Press," and she will appear on both NBC and its left-leaning #MSNBC cable network whose hosts she decried as "primetime propagandists" less than a year ago.
NBC News is filled with professional journalists doing good work.
Many of them have documented in exhausting (or actually quite lively and entertaining) detail the ways in which Trump and his helpers have corroded American democracy.
#McDaniel, on the other hand, was a major player in a political project that’s antithetical to that mission.
Trump’s GOP was and is built on delegitimizing the people and institutions that might otherwise check itCongress; the judiciary; the electorates of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.
Foremost among the institutions Trump wants to blow up is legacy political media, and its critical, fact-checked information stream. The goal is to erode trust in the press. 
I’m not sure why the suits at NBC News think it’s in anyone’s best interest to hire someone to do that work for Trump.
Trump’s attacks on the media don’t have a parallel in modern US politics.
He has called the press the “enemy of the people” and accused them of “treason.”
A close ally has already signaled that Trump would use the powers of his office to crack down on critical outlets, if he wins a second term.
Spending seven years running interference for a fascistic fraudster who holds the First Amendment in roughly the same terminal contempt with which he regards women and low-flow toilets is not the kind of thing that should qualify you for a new career in journalism.
But #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.
In November 2020 story in Politico, just a few months before the Capitol insurrection, Tim Alberta offered a glimpse of how McDaniel abetted Trump’s lies about the election and allowed her party organization to amplify them in even more absurd ways:
McDaniel told multiple confidants that she doubted there was any scalable voter fraud in Michigan.
Nevertheless, McDaniel told friends and fellow Republicans that she needed to stay the course with Trump and his legal team.
This wasn’t about indulging him, she said, but rather about demonstrating a willingness to fight
—even when the fight couldn’t be won.
This is why McDaniel has sanctioned her employees, beginning with top spokesperson Liz Harrington, to spread countless demonstrable falsehoods in the weeks since Election Day.
It’s why the RNC, on McDaniel’s watch, tweeted out a video clip of disgraced lawyer Sidney Powell claiming Trump “won in a landslide” (when he lost by more than 6 million votes nationally) and alleging a global conspiracy to rig the election against him.
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.
And that’s sort of the larger point here.