Nicolle Wallace Joins In Public Rebuke Of NBC News’ Decision To Hire Former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel — Update

UPDATE: Nicole Wallace added her voice to the NBCU personalities blasting the NBC News decision to hire former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor.

On this afternoon’s Deadline White House on MSNBC, Wallace did an extended segment on the controversy, reading from a passage in Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny before bringing the author on as a guest.

Wallace read, “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being access. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power in what it can do.”

Wallace then said that in hiring McDaniel, “NBC News is, either wittingly or unwittingly, teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air and interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections.”

She then ran a clip of Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker’s interview with McDaniel from Sunday morning, in which the former RNC chair said that Joe Biden won the 2020 election “fair and square.” But she had previously refused to say that Biden was legitimately elected president, including in an interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace last year. In the Meet the Press interview, McDaniel said that still believed that “there were problems” with the 2020 results.

Wallace told viewers, “There were no problems.”

She continued her criticism of the network, “What we’ve also said to election deniers is not just that they can do that on our airwaves, but they can do that as one of us, a badge carrying employee of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.”

Wallace also praised NBC News’ chief political analyst Chuck Todd who, in an appearance on Meet the Presspublicly rebuked the network for the decision, saying that McDaniel had questionable credibility.

Earlier in the day, MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski called on NBC News to reconsider its decision.

“There is this reputation that MSNBC is somehow different, maybe less than, because we platform opinion,” Wallace said. “I will tell you, over the last 48 hours, it has been the opinion anchors most upset about the liar. And I won’t say most because I think Chuck Todd made clear. He went first. He did something really brave. I talked to him yesterday. I said, ‘I am knitting you a cape.’”

The story also was the topic of segments on CNN and Fox News.

PREVIOUSLY: MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski called on NBC News to reconsider its decision to hire former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor.

They are the latest network voices to publicly criticize the decision to retain McDaniel, who was ousted as chair earlier this year.

“We learned about the hire when we read about it in the press on Friday,” Scarborough told viewers. “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons, including, but not limited to, as lawyers might say, Miss McDaniel’s role in Trump’s fake electors scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone.”

Brzezinski added, “To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election converage, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier, and we hope NBC will reconsider its decision.” She added that “it goes without saying” that McDaniel will not be a guest on Morning Joe in her capacity as a paid contributor.

Morning Joe then cut to a segment on Meet the Press from Sunday, in which moderator Kristen Welker pressed McDaniel on her past refusal to say that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president in 2020. Welker played a clip of an interview McDaniel, when she was still RNC chair, gave to CNN’s Chris Wallace last year, in which she said that she didn’t think Biden “won it fair.” But in the interview with Welker, she said that she now thinks that Biden won it “fair and square.”

A spokesperson for NBC News said that they had no comment.

In a panel discussion later on Meet the Press on Sunday, NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd sharply criticized the network’s decision to hire McDaniel, saying she had credibility issues and that it put Welker in an awkward spot. Welker had been working to secure an interview with McDaniel before the network’s decision to retain her as a paid contributor.

NBC News and other networks have grappled with how to cover Trump and his allies as the former president makes a new bid for the White House. Last year, CNN faced internal pushback for its decision to feature Trump in a town hall, which turned into a rally-like atmosphere with his supporters in the audience. MSNBC and CNN also have carried portions of Trump’s speeches, but with fact checking as he continues to traffic in unfounded claims.

Since her departure from the RNC, McDaniel had been pitched to the networks, a common practice after elected and political officials depart from high-profile posts. There had been definite interest at other networks, with a view that McDaniel wasn’t the kind of flame thrower like other Trump allies, figures like Corey Lewandowski, the former campaign manager who went on to serve as commentator on CNN.

In announcing the hire of McDaniel on Friday, the network said that her role “represents an ongoing commitment to featuring a variety of voices who can offer firsthand insight on today’s politics.” The network also said that she would appear across NBC News platforms, including MSNBC. The network saw her as someone who could provide insight into the Trump campaign, unlike other analysts.

But after the announcement, MSNBC President Rashida Jones assured staffers that it would be up to individual shows whether to book her and that they would not be forced to have her on as part of political analysis. That also is the case for other shows on the network platforms.

Networks have seen internal discord over other past hires of contributors, as was the case when NBC News and MSNBC tapped Jen Psaki as she was preparing to depart the White House as President Joe Biden’s first press secretary. In 2022, CBS News also got pushback when it hired Mick Mulvaney, who has served as acting chief of staff for Trump, as a political analyst. He has since left the network and joined NewsNation.