Outcry against her hiring from both within and outside of the company didn’t stop former RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel from making her debut as a political commentator for NBC this weekend, where the ousted party boss offered some opinions notably at odds with her previous positions.
In an apparent response to the backlash against the former chairwoman’s recently announced role at NBC, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker preempted her Sunday sit down with McDaniel by offering a disclaimer that the meeting was arranged well before anyone learned the Republican would join the network as a $300,000-per-year contributor.
“In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel had become a paid NBC news contributor. This will be a news interview and I was not involved in her hiring,” Welker said.
Welker did not go easy on her new co-worker, asking the ex-chairwoman why the viewing public should trust her thoughts on the upcoming election, considering her alleged involvement in efforts to keep former President Donald Trump in power after he lost in 2020. Despite those allegations and Trump’s continued assertions the election was somehow stolen, McDaniel said that it is her current position that President Joe Biden won “fair and square.”
She also spoke out against the events of January 6, 2021 and the hundreds of people imprisoned as a result. Trump, on several occasions, has said that if he wins a second term he will pardon those prisoners on his first day in office.
“I do not think people who committed violent acts on January 6 should be freed,” McDaniel said.
Asked why she didn’t speak out against Trump’s positions earlier, she said it was her job to walk the party line.
“When you are the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team,” she said. “Now I get to be a little bit more myself.”
McDaniel recently lost her position on top of the Republican party in favor new leaders hand picked by Trump, one of whom is his daughter-in-law.
Her appearance Sunday — Welker said it was McDaniel’s first since losing her job — came following uproar among viewers of MSNBC, who wondered how a person who previously denied the results of the 2020 election and attacked the media alongside Trump could land a job at the news network.
The outcry led to executives at the company issuing assurances to employees that McDaniel would not appear on liberal-leaning MSNBC, but would be asked to provide insight into the 2024 election for NBC shows.
Former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, who joined Sunday’s program after the McDaniel interview, said he wanted to “deal with the elephant in the room.”
“I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation,” he told Welker. “Because I don’t know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. So I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract.”
