MSNBC’s Rich, White, Liberal, Wine Mom Story Hour (aka Deadline: White House) made sure Monday afternoon to add its voice to the shrieking, almost infantile-like meltdown across the liberal media over parent company NBC’s decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor.
Over three segments, host Nicolle Wallace melted down over McDaniel (or, to be honest, any Trump supporter) polluting “our sacred airwaves.” By Tuesday afternoon, the outrage worked as Puck’s Dylan Byers first reported she’d be dropped from the company.
From the get-go, the queen of apocalyptic, hiding-under-the-covers but pious rhetoric went straight to a ten: “The times in which we do this — when we meet, you and us at the table are — I don’t have tell you this, dire. This show has dedicated itself to a jarring pursuit of the uncomfortable truth about our politics and our political leaders and our justice system and yes, the media.”
Wallace wrapped herself in the flag of democracy: “For our part here, we’re going to cover this story as part of our ongoing series of conversations about American autocracy, asking the question or positing the theory that it could happen here.”
She even framed the idea Trump supporters should be allowed to have a paid voice in the media as some existential threat to democracy with “NBC News…either wittingly or unwittingly is teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches way well beyond appearing on our air” and, worse yet, would tarnish the Comcast-owned network’s “sacred airwaves”.
To underline this comical doom and gloom, Wallace turned to On Tyranny author Timothy Snyder and quoted from the first page, saying it gave her “chills” that appeasing tyranny had come to her workplace (click “expand”):
I’m going to read you an excerpt from Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Tim is standing by to talk to us. This from the first page of the first chapter of On Tyranny: “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead of what a moral repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.” In this instance, NBC News is either wittingly or unwittingly is teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches way well beyond appearing on our air and interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections[.]
(….)
[W]hat we have also said to election deniers is not just they can do that on our airwaves, but that they can do that as one of us, as badge carrying employees of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves. Joining us now, Yale University history professor, author of the aforementioned and quoted from best-selling book On Tyranny: 20 Lessons for the 20th Century, Timothy Snyder. One of my colleagues sent me a screenshot of that first page and it — it gave me chills and I thought if I have an opportunity, I have to say — nobody at this company stopped me from having this conversation with you and I’m grateful for that — this was the part of the story that I found most haunting. That — what you write is that authoritarianism doesn’t come in and take things, but what they — they do is learn and operate in the spaces that they’re given and I wondered through that lens how you see this development and what warnings you have for the media?
Snyder’s highfalutin exercise served as feeding the doom-and-gloom projection of wine moms everywhere that McDaniel being hired was some sort of hinge moment (click “expand”):
What NBC has done is they’ve invited into what should be a normal framework, someone who doesn’t believe that that framework should exist at all. What — what NBC has done of its own volition is bring into a very important conversation about democracy, one which is going to take place for the next seven months or so, is Ronna McDaniel, who tried to disassemble our democracy, who personally took part in an, attempt to undo the American system. And so, bringing that in without questioning it is obeying the advance. Because what NBC is doing is saying, “well, could be that in ‘24, our entire system will break down, could be we’ll have an authoritarian leader — oh, but look, we’ve made this adjustment in advance because we’ve brought into the middle of NBC somebody who — who has already taken part in an attempt to take our system down.” So yeah, I think this is pretty bad.
(….)
[I]t doesn’t at all have to do with what party you belong to, although you might say that what McDaniel did was help transform the Republican Party into a kind of personality cult, which is where we’re heading now, right? That’s essentially where she’s — she’s left it. But that’s another issue. The lines for me would be things like if you are going to be on American media, you should be somebody who believes that there is something called truth, that there are things called facts and you can pursue them. You shouldn’t have been someone who has over and over and over again pushed the idea of fake news, educated Americans away from the facts, away from a belief from the facts. And a second red line would be something like this: If — if we’re going to be putting people on the news who have participated in an attempt to overthrow the system, then we have to ask, at the very beginning, why did you do that? Why is that legitimate? And we have to ask yourselves, why are we bringing these people into the middle of our discussions, so my two red lines would be you should be somebody who is at least trying for the facts and you shouldn’t be somebody who has taken part in an attempt to undo the system, which is — which is what we’re talking about here. We shouldn’t mince words about it. When she was — what she took part of from December of 2020 at the latest in attempt to change the American system by knowingly bringing in, by knowingly bringing in these — these — these false — these false electoral slates, that’s really something like extraordinary.
(….)
If everybody gives up on factuality, at the end of the day, there won’t be an NBC or an MSNBC. There won’t — there won’t be media in the sense that we believe in them. And so, people — so then it should be — an alarm bell should ring if you’re dealing with people have said fake news, fake news, fake news over and over again. And the other thing people should think about is they make a distinction between — again, it’s not about Democrats or Republicans or conservatives or liberals or progressives or whatever it might be. It’s about people who sincerely believe that we have a Constitution which allows us, which gives us a framework for discussion, a framework for this section of power or are we talking about people who really believe that this system is done for, that we should have one-person rule — right — and it’s perfectly fine so long as you have that one person to put him in power against the rules and just let him sit there.
Bidding farewell to Snyder, Wallace whined this was “a scary thing to cover your own place of employment.”
The second segment featured Wallace alongside fellow former Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-pompous prick David Jolly. Wallace huffed how “[t]hese conversations are hard to have, but I think if you don’t have them, what are we doing here.”
Jolly insisted this was “a conversation about the role of media, about decisions of news enterprises” before bragging with impressive pomposity that “the viewers of this platform in particular for at least eight years have found a home here for conversations around protecting democracy and what they saw in the hiring of Ronna McDaniel is a decision to bring on-board someone who’s a liar.”
Doubling down on how McDaniel shouldn’t be allowed on NBC because she “undermin[ed] democracy”, Jolly proclaimed that, unlike some “media outlets” (i.e. Fox News or anyone to the right of Jolly) who have “abandon[ed] critical thinking”, MSNBC would remain steadfast in “being the backstop…protecting democracy”.
Following Wallace disingenuously claiming this wasn’t “about the ideological spectrum”, Jolly agreed with the cartoonish proclamation they were true Republicans as they, unlike the dumb rubes out there, have stood for what’s right (click “expand”):
Shared set of facts, which speaks to the line and shared set of values, which is the advancement of democracy in the United States for all people. And, as you and I have discussed, it’s a little intriguing because we each have participated in a party that ultimately produced Donald Trump, but where I would suggest this is radically different, not asking for forgiveness for my own sins as a Republican, but — but it is important. You participated in the McCain camp to push back and try to stop the Tea Party emergence that ultimately led to Donald Trump. Michael Steele participated in the autopsy that tried to create a bigger tent Republican party to speak to more people. As a member of Congress, I opposed Donald Trump, denounced him. I cited with Democrats on marriage and guns and a lot of other issues.
We understood this journey is not always a fight against each other, but it is a fight for the future of the country. Ronna McDaniel sees this as a fight against each other and that is a — a zero sum game where Republicans must win. That’s reason to question her voice in this conversation.
In the third block, Wallace read from a Liz Cheney tweet lambasting NBC before giving way to Jolly whining that, given what happened on January 6, “[t]here is a reason that Liz Cheney, who saw all of this up front…is angry and I think she’s as angry as many viewers who are watching right now.”
Someone get Jolly and Wallace fainting couches. No one should ever confuse them as free thinkers.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcript from March 25, click here.