What’s Going On with These People? (NBC News Edition)

We regret to inform you that America’s journalists are in the midst of another temper tantrum. This one is in response to NBC News’s decision to hire former RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor. The network’s own employees are in open revolt, incensed at the prospect of having to share screen time with a Republican who hasn’t completely disavowed Donald Trump.

NBC chief political analyst Chuck Todd, a former Democratic campaign aide, slammed NBC executives for hiring someone with “credibility issues” and a history of “gaslighting.” Democratic scion Mika Brzezinski urged the network to “reconsider its decision.” Host Kristen Welker issued a trigger warning over the weekend before airing her interview with McDaniel on Meet the Press. Nicolle Wallace read a passage from a book about tyranny and bemoaned the degradation of “our sacred airwaves.”

It wouldn’t be the first time so-called mainstream journalists have revealed themselves to be hopelessly out of touch with the average Americans they claim to care about. The partisan tantrum over McDaniel’s hiring suggests they are incapable of self-awareness.

Perhaps we can look forward to further discussion of this “scandal” on Inside with Jen Psaki, the MSNBC weekend show hosted by the former press secretary to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Psaki could invite MSNBC contributor Robert Gibbs, another Obama press secretary, to share his thoughts on the matter. In the following segment, MSNBC contributor Ben Rhodes, the former Obama national security adviser who bragged about manipulating “clueless” reporters, could explain why McDaniel’s hiring is good for Iran.

Better yet, MSNBC host Joy Reid could deliver an unhinged monologue denouncing the network for endorsing “white supremacy.” Reid was promoted in 2020 to fill the time slot vacated by Chris Matthews, the former Democratic aide who argued it was racist to refer to Barack Obama as “Obama.” Matthews resigned abruptly after being accused of sexual harassment, whereas Reid did not resign after online sleuths uncovered bigoted posts on her old blog. She blamed it on hackers. (It wasn’t hackers.) She got promoted anyway.

Reid could continue the conversation with MSNBC political analyst Al Sharpton, the formerly obese racial agitator who instigated deadly anti-Semitic riots in New York City during the 1990s. Sharpton continues to use his platform on MSNBC to sow racial division. For example, he argued that criticizing Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned in disgrace earlier this year amid a flurry of scandals involving serial plagiarism and anti-Semitism on campus, was “an attack on every black woman in this country.”

This is the same network that hired Martin Bashir, who compared criticizing the IRS to using the n-word and ultimately resigned after inviting his viewers to defecate in Sarah Palin’s mouth. This is the network that employed Melissa Harris-Perry, best known for making fun of Mitt Romney’s adopted black grandchild, and Ed Schultz, best known for calling Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut,” and Brian Williams, best known for lying about coming under fire in Iraq, and Touré Neblett, a 9/11 truther accused of sexual harassment who suggested Holocaust survivors benefited from “the power of whiteness.” The less said about former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann the better.

This is the network that could have broken the story of Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual misconduct in 2017. Alas, reporter Ronan Farrow said NBC stonewalled his investigation after Weinstein leveraged his Democratic political connections and threatened to expose Today anchor Matt Lauer’s own history of sexual misconduct. Farrow gave up on NBC, published his story in the New Yorker, and won the Pulitzer Prize.

NBC is hardly unique among so-called mainstream media networks. The top journalist at ABC News is George Stephanopoulos, who served as White House communications director under Bill Clinton and was exposed by the Washington Free Beacon for failing to disclose his $75,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation while reporting on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2015. The network’s longtime investigative journalist, Brian Ross, was eventually forced out after reporting a false story about Donald Trump in 2018. Ross won several journalism awards in 2012, the same year he baselessly accused a Tea Party member of committing a mass shooting in Colorado.

ABC News anchor Amy Robach complained in 2019 that the network refused to air her interview with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers in part because it involved Prince Andrew and the network was worried about losing access to the British royal family. On a related note, Epstein threw a dinner party for Prince Andrew in 2010 following Epstein’s release from prison for sex crimes. Stephanopoulos attended along with other prominent journalists, including Katie Couric and Charlie Rose.

Then there’s CNN, where Dan Rather used to regularly appear on a show called Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter, the media reporter who once ran an entire segment on Donald Trump’s typos. Rather was a longtime CBS News anchor until his abrupt termination in 2006 after reporting a false story about then-president George W. Bush’s service record in the National Guard. Jeffrey Toobin returned to CNN as a commentator earlier this year despite announcing his “last day” at the network in 2022. He is best known for masturbating on a Zoom call with colleagues, as well as for sleeping with his coworker’s daughter and then pressuring her to have an abortion.

These are the people who are mad at NBC News for hiring a Republican. They still can’t figure out why most Americans don’t trust journalists to tell the truth. They don’t deserve to be taken seriously. They are full of shit.