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Chuck Todd

'Impossible Situation': Chuck Todd Assails NBC Brass Over McDaniel Hire

Two days after NBC News' Friday, March 22 announcement that former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel had been hired by the network as a political analyst, NBC's Meet the Press host Kristen Welker interviewed the ex-GOP leader Sunday, grilling McDaniel about past statements she's made disregarding the 2020 presidential election results.

After years of pushing ex-President Donald Trump's Big Lie that the election was stolen from him by President Joe Biden and the Democrats, the former RNC chair told Welker. "The reality is Joe Biden won." CNN reports McDaniel has "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."

Following her conversation with McDaniel, Welker sat down with former Meet the Press host and NBC News veteran Chuck Todd, asking him to share his "takeaways" from the interview.

"Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room," Todd said, telling Welker, "I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don't know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract."

The former NBC host continued, "She wants us to believe she was speaking for the RNC, when the RNC was paying for her. So she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who is paying her? Once at the RNC she did say that, Hey I'm speaking for her party, I get that, that's part of the job. So, what about here?"

Todd added, "I will say this: I think your interview did a good job at exposing many of the contradictions. And look, there's a reason why a lot of journalists at NBC are uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination. So, that's where you begin here. And so, when NBC made the decision to give her NBC News' credibility, you gotta ask yourself what does she bring NBC News?"

"And when we make deals like this — and I've been at this company a long time — you're doing it for access. Access to audience. Sometimes it's access to an individual. And we can have a journalistic ethics debate about that. I'm willing to have that debate. If you told me we were hiring her as a technical adviser to the Republican convention, I think that would be certainly defensible. If you told me, 'we're talking to her, but let's see how she does in some interviews,' and maybe vet her with actual journalists inside the network.

Todd emphasized, "I do think, unfortunately this interview is always gonna be looked through the prism of, 'who is she speaking for?'" I think you did everything you could do," Todd told Welker. "You got put into an impossible situation. Booking this interview, and then all of a sudden the rug is 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 that you did the best that you could," he added.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Ronna Romney McDaniel

'Handmaid Of Fascism': Ronna McDaniel's New NBC Gig Provokes Fury

Exactly two weeks after her Trump-engineered exit as chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel has been hired by NBC News and MSNBC as a political commentator, fomenting fury among journalists, press watchers, and ordinary Americans.

Declaring that the network has a “crucial mission,” which it “performs like no other,” NBC News senior vice president of politics Carrie Budoff Brown announced McDaniel’s hiring to employees in a memo Friday, which ws published by The Hollywood Reporter.

“It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” Brown wrote. “As chair of the Republican National Committee, she spent nearly eight years at the highest levels of American politics before stepping down earlier this year. As we gear up for the longest general election season in recent memory, she will support our leading coverage by providing an insider’s perspective on national politics and on the future of the Republican Party — which she led through some of the most turbulent and challenging moments in political history. And as a longtime Michigan resident, she’ll be an important voice from one of this year’s key battlegrounds.”

Critics shared a different version of McDaniels’ résumé – and NBC News’ responsibilities.

“NBC is and must be, first and foremost, in the credibility business. She will compromise that every time she appears on air. She cannot be trusted,” wrote David Rothkopf, a journalist, author, and foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator. Rothkopf is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He also called it “a terrible decision” and McDaniel “a proven serial liar.”

Media Matters ran this headline: “NBC News hires Ronna McDaniel, who played a key role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to NBC News.”

The sub-head: “Even participating in an attempted coup can’t disrupt the politics-to-pundit pipeline.”

“Prosecutors argued that, as NBC News characterized it, McDaniel has ‘unique knowledge’ about ‘the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election,'” writes Media Matters’ John Knefel. “NBC News executives can perhaps be forgiven for these repeated oversights, though. After all, the network laid off dozens of its news staffers in January, so maybe there aren’t enough researchers around to dig into the network’s own coverage of its newest contributor.”

Others also pointed to McDaniel’s credibility and alleged actions to undermine democracy and overturn the 2020 election.

“McDaniel lied about the 2020 election result, was involved in a pressure campaign to get Michigan officials not to certify the vote, and has accused MSNBC of ‘spreading lies’ and employing ‘primetime propagandists,'” declared former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, now editor-in-chief of Zeteo News.

Political strategist Rachel Bitecofer, talking about McDaniel’s work during the 2020 election, wrote: “Ronna McDaniel was balls deep in the coup plot. She flew to swing states to encourage Republican state legislators and Republican election officials to submit fraudulent electors to steal the election from Joe Biden. If I was an @NBCNews employee I’d be pissed.”

The Daily Beast’s senior media reporter Justin Baragona dug up a social media post by McDaniel that disparages the network she will now be working for.

Attorney and MediasTouch.com editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski posted video of McDaniel “saying she hopes the US defaults on its debt because that will help Republicans.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob served NBC News this dire warning: “A MAGA dictatorship would crush legitimate news organizations and embrace propaganda outfits. By hiring a fascist liar Ronna McDaniel, NBC has shown which one it wants to be.”

“Carrie Budoff Brown is a traitor to democracy,” continued Jacob, who writes the Stop the Presses newsletter. He added: “This is what media complicity with fascism looks like. NBC is paying a co-conspirator in the Jan. 6 insurrection to keep deceiving the American people.”

Current MSNBC columnist Marisa Kabas wrote Brown a letter in which she says, “As we approach the 2024 election, it has never been more important for viewers and readers to have trust in their news outlets. Rehabilitating the reputation of an enabler of a government coup will completely undermine that trust.”

“As RNC Chairwoman,” Kabas continued, “McDaniel was quite literally on a phone call with former President Trump when he pressured two local Michigan officials not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election. McDaniel told the officials, ‘If you can go home tonight and do not sign it… We will get you attorneys.’ She also called for an erroneous investigation into another Michigan county’s voting procedures which was so riddled with false claims, the Michigan Department of State issued a statement saying her claims had ‘no merit.'”

Dash Dobrofsky, who writes The Gen Z Perspective, posted: “MSNBC just hired Ronna McDaniel — an election-denying, racist, pro-fascist, homophobic pathological liar — as their latest political contributor/commentator. In other words, they will pay her to lie for Trump during an election year. MSNBC is not a legitimate news organization.”

From McDaniel’s home state, Craig Mauger of The Detroit Newswrites: “Here’s our reporting from December about her involvement in a call to pressure the Wayne County canvassers not to sign the 2020 election certification,” as he points to this story that reads in part:

“On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look ‘terrible’ if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.”

Puck News founding partner and Washington correspondent Julia Ioffe summed it up:

“Real journalists are losing their jobs, but the handmaids of American fascism are getting plum spots in legacy American media organizations. Shame on you, @NBCNews.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Katie Hobbs Wins In Arizona, Beating Election Denier Kari Lake

Katie Hobbs Wins In Arizona, Beating Election Denier Kari Lake

Democrats enjoyed yet another welcome burst of news when NBC called the Arizona governor's race for Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who will be the first Democrat in 14 years to lead what’s become a crucial swing state. Hobbs leads her far-right opponent, former local TV anchor Kari Lake, 50.4-49.6 with 98 percent of the likely total vote reporting for the contest to succeed termed-out Gov. Doug Ducey. Republicans hoped that later-counted ballots would allow Lake to overcome the edge that Hobbs has enjoyed since Election Night, but those batches of votes weren’t quite red enough to deny Hobbs the win.

Lake, who began spreading conspiracy theories and cultivating ties with the extremist right well before she went off the air last year as a news anchor for Phoenix's Fox 10, was part of Trump’s nationwide primary slate of Big Lie spreaders, and she rode that support to beat out a Ducey-backed foe for the nomination in August. Lake quickly became a national MAGA star, and some over-eager observers speculated that she could be Trump’s running mate―or even a future presidential nominee―even though she hadn’t even won her own race yet. Lake herself even recorded videos imploring voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania to elect like-minded Trumpists, Tudor Dixon and Doug Mastriano, to lead their respective states.

What Lake didn’t do in the general election, though, was abandon her conspiracy mongering. The Republican nominee spent the week before the election making light of the assassination attempt on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C.—apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” Lake also continued to push the Big Lie, saying of Trump’s 2020 loss in Arizona, “We had 740,000 ballots with no chain of custody. Those ballots shouldn’t have been counted.”

Hobbs, for her part, launched her campaign last year highlighting how she performed her job as the Grand Canyon State’s chief election administrator in the face of death threats. Hobbs ran a considerably more low-key campaign than Lake, who aired several ads hitting the Democrat for refusing to debate her. Hobbs and her allies, though, stuck with their strategy of highlighting Lake’s extremism, which included an ad hitting her for appearing to flirt with secession in response to the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago.

Hobbs’ victory will make her Arizona’s first Democratic governor since early 2009, when Janet Napolitano resigned to become Barack Obama’s first secretary of homeland security. Team Blue knew that Napolitano’s departure would hand the governor’s office to Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer, who was next in line for the top job in a state that lacks a lieutenant governor’s post, but they hoped the GOP would hand back control the next year.

That was a huge miscalculation. Brewer was in place to sign the infamous anti-immigrant bill SB 1070 into law months before she rode the 2010 red wave to a full term, and Ducey won the following two elections. Hobbs, though, finally returns this office to Democratic control over a decade after they forfeited it.

P.S. It looks like Arizona will, starting in 2026, elect a lieutenant governor for the first time, since voters are on the verge of passing a ballot measure to establish the post. Hobbs would be able to name her own running mate, who would assume the governorship should Hobbs win a second term but be unable to complete it, ensuring that the debacle of 2009 can never be repeated. Until then, though, the person next in line to succeed her will be Secretary of State-elect Adrian Fontes, a fellow Democrat who won the race to succeed Hobbs by defeating election denier Mark Finchem.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

President Joe Biden

Promoting Their Biden Narrative, Beltway Press Corps Fails Again

Reprinted with permission from Press Run

One day after the New York Times in a page-one piece implied that President Joe Biden is an incompetent who lacks empathy, the State Department announced the U.S. had successfully evacuated 30,000 people from Afghanistan since the end of July, and that 8,000 people departed on Saturday alone, as they filled 60 departing flights from Kabul airport. So much for incompetence.

A thinly veiled opinion column that ran under the banner of "news analysis," the Times piece was written by White House correspondent Peter Baker. Pounding the daily's preferred downer troop withdrawal narrative, Baker went out of his way to suggest Biden, whose administration is overseeing a massive Afghanistan airlift and troop withdrawal, is similarly incompetent to Trump, who oversaw the death of 600,000 Americans to Covid-19 last year. It was a stunning bout of failed, Both Sides journalism by Baker.

Led by the New York Times' and CNN's frenzied reporting and analysis, the media have gone all in with the narrative that Biden's presidency sits on the precipice of ruin in the wake of U.S.'s long-expected troop departure from Afghanistan. (Fact: It does not.)

Deliberately falling down a deep well of optics reporting (Biden is "defiant and defensive") and launching sweeping, and often hysterical, conclusions that are not based in fact, the press gathered up its forces days ago and set off on a one-sidedfeeding frenzy excursion, where week-old "chaotic images" are still treated as breaking news by CNN. Let's be honest, if the State Departement announced it had evacuated 100,000 people from Kabul, it wouldn't change the media's predetermined coverage.

Eager to injure Biden, Beltway scribes gleefully engage in groupthink, echo GOP talking points without pause, and set their sights on the leader of the Democratic Party.

Sound familiar? Does this conjure up disturbing images of the 2016 campaign, when the same invested journalists unleashed a feeding frenzy on the country's top Democrat, feasted on "optics" analysis, badly overplayed the facts of the story, excitedly amplified Republican lawmakers, obsessed over process, and repeatedly demanded apologies from Hillary Clinton for how she handled her private email correspondence?

It's not possible to watch much of the misguided Afghanistan coverage and not see the clear similarities between that and the media's woeful But Her Emails brand of coverage that helped elect Trump.

Reminder: ABC, CBS, and NBC's network evening newscasts in 2016 aired just 32 minutes of in-depth campaign policy coverage. That same year they devoted 100 minutes to the Clinton email stories. Virtually all of the attention was negative.

Both Afghanistan and But Her Emails coverage strictly adheres to a (fantasy) storyline of the media's making, and one that features a floundering Democrat unable to put off raging political fires.

On Sunday, CNN claimed the U.S. was inflicting "moral injury" by "abandoning" allies. This, as America continue to evacuate tens of thousands of allies. That same day CNN claimed that Biden's long-expected troop withdrawal meant the U.S. was "walking away from the world stage" and "leaving Europe exposed." Fact: Most European troops left Afghanistan seven years ago. Not sure how that now means Biden's move in Afghanistan is leaving that continent "exposed."

Despite days of wildly excited media analysis about how Afghanistan could destroy Biden's entire presidency, the press still can't find any evidence the story is registering with voters. It's also impossible to recall a week of nonstop military "crisis" coverage when not a single shot was fired at U.S. troops. But for Afghanistan, the media gladly make an exception.

A Times column recently counseled how Biden could "save his presidency" in the wake of the Afghanistan controversy. Biden's ending an extremely unpopular war and is bringing the troops home without a single U.S. casualty in the process, but he has to "save his presidency"?

That makes no sense.

On Friday, NBC's indignant Richard Engel tweeted his upset over the fact that American officials were negotiating with the Tablian in order to allow for a transfer of power that's as peaceful as possible. Keep in mind, Engel has covered the Afghanistan conflict for years, but on Friday he feigned shock that after losing a 20-year war, the U.S. would be negotiating its exit with the victors of the war. The purposeful naïveté was remarkable — but essential in order to bash Biden. For the record, it was because of those U.S.-Taliban negotiations that U.S. troops have not come under fire in the last week.

Sometimes it was just easier to make stuff up in order to attack Biden. The Times' Frank Bruni accused Biden of "arrogance" because he "thought leaving Afghanistan would be simple," even though Biden never once suggested that leaving Afghanistan would be "simple."

Also on Friday, the Wall Street Journal ran a Biden gotcha "exclusive" on page one, which was widely picked up by other news outlets: "Internal State Department Cable Warned of Kabul Collapse." The smoking gun, right? Biden's team was warned that the Taliban would quickly take over Afghanistan in early August when U.S. troops were withdrawing, but the Biden team ignored the counsel.

Wrong.

The State Department cable warned of an Afghanistan government collapse after the troops withdrawal deadline of August 31. Also, halfway through the article, the Journal conceded the cable was received by top State Department officials who welcomed the on-the-ground-analysis, and who folded the information into the contingency plans. So much for that gotcha. But all day, journalists were buzzing about a confidential cable that Biden's team supposedly ignored. "A WSJ scoop that casts perhaps the harshest light yet on the administration's performance," Politico exclaimed, completely misrepresenting the Journal story.

When the press eagerly signs off on a crisis narrative involving a Democrat, almost no new facts on the ground will change their committed view. We saw that in 2016 when the press played a key role in tearing down Clinton, and we're seeing it this month with unrestrained Afghanistan coverage.