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    MSNBC faces uncertain future amid Comcast sale and Trump election win

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    For years, the cable news channel MSNBC has been a reliable liberal voice in the US media landscape, but amid the return of Donald Trump to the White House and its own business upheavals the network is now in crisis.The world’s richest man, and close Trump ally, Elon Musk has even – possibly jokingly – repeatedly publicly touted the idea of buying MSNBC after the parent company of the channel, Comcast, recently revealed that it would spin off the cable news network.Audience fatigue with Trump’s re-election and high-profile MSNBC hosts’ potential missteps in reaction to that event could make it difficult for the new company to boost the channel’s ratings, which were already declining before the election, and continue providing a leftwing perspective on global events, US media analysts told the Guardian.The negative reports about the channel over the last month are just the latest examples of an established US media company struggling to find its footing as people continue to drop cable television packages and instead use streaming services.But the particularly sharp recent ratings decline and reports of Musk perhaps buying the network could make it especially difficult for high-profile programming such as Morning Joe and The Rachel Maddow Show to continue providing a progressive alternative to Fox News, the analysts say.During Trump’s first term, “MSNBC really stood as a center for resisting and critiquing Trump,” said Kathryn Cramer Brownell, associate professor of history at Purdue University and author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.“It remains to be seen if they are able to forge an identity and a political viewership in opposition to Trump or not,” she added.In 2016, an average of 4.2 million people tuned into CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2022, that number decreased to 3.8 million.MSNBC briefly saw a significant ratings increase during the 2020 tumult of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and presidential election, but they later again declined.In October, the Comcast president said the company was considering spinning off its cable networks, including CNBC and MSNBC into a separate company. Then last week, the company made an official announcement.Since election day, MSNBC has averaged about 521,000 viewers each day, a 38% decrease from its 2024 average before 5 November, according to data from Nielsen.Then Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort to speak with him about “abortion, mass deportation” and his threats of “retribution against political opponents and media outlets”, Scarborough said on air about the meeting.“We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so,” Scarborough said, but they agreed to continue a dialogue.Afterwards, the hosts faced a significant backlash and ratings decrease.“They made a fundamental business error,” Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor and author, said. “There is now a large new ecosystem of independent media, and people left the Washington Post and they are leaving MSNBC, and that worries me.”Brownell said she was not surprised by the morning show hosts meeting with the president-elect.“Media businesses frequently rely on cultivating relationships with political leaders and presidential administrations. It’s part of how they remain relevant,” she said. “But you can see the backlash with a show that kind of leans left and relies on those critics of Trump as their audience members.”The future of such shows is also uncertain because of Comcast’s decision to spin off the cable news networks along with channels such E!, USA and the Golf Channel into a separate company.“When you look at our assets, talented management team and balance-sheet strength, we are able to set these businesses up for future growth,” said Brian L Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast.After the announcement, Donald Trump Jr, joked on X that Musk should buy MSNBC, to which Musk replied: “How much does it cost?”A spinoff does not mean the company is for sale. Musk, who owns X, was one of Trump’s biggest backers this election and is now reportedly part of his inner circle, had previously described MSNBC as the “utter scum of the Earth”.CNN reported that billionaires with “liberal bona fides” have also expressed interest in buying MSNBC.“I fear that [Musk] could try to buy MSNBC, and I fear that Comcast could be immoral enough to sell it to him,” Jarvis said.Even if one of the liberal billionaires buys the network, its ability to be profitable in the long-term while providing left-leaning news and commentary is uncertain as people stop subscribing to cable.But after the 2016 election and the victor’s constant attacks on the media, many news organizations, including MSNBC, got a so-called “Trump bump”.Could that happen again once he takes office?“If there is a Trump bump, I suspect it will be delayed,” said Marty Kaplan, who holds the Norman Lear Chair in entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “It may take a few beats for doomscrollers to get past the nausea. On the other hand, a media fast may be a popular new year’s resolution.”Even if the cord-cutting and recent events do lead to MSNBC’s demise, Brownell said she sees podcasts doing great journalism and thinks “the diversifying media landscape opens up a lot of possibilities”.“The challenge is the economic issue. How do you fund and sustain some of these other alternative journalistic projects?” she said. “You can have nonprofit organizations step in, foundations. It’s an opportunity to be creative … [and rethink] economic approaches to funding really good and hard-hitting and necessary journalism.” More

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      ‘An existential battle’: how Trump’s win is shifting the US media landscape

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      When MSNBC’s morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski announced to their viewers last week that they had paid a visit to Donald Trump at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago they must have suspected there would be a reaction.The married co-hosts on the liberal news network made hay for years lambasting Trump, especially in the run-up to the presidential election. Now, in the wake of his victory, they told their viewers they were seeking to reset communications with the man they had warned only a few weeks ago was set to bring fascism to America.“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different,’ Brzezinski told Morning Joe viewers on Monday. “That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”Their reward? An online barn-burning by their critics online and a fall in viewer numbers for a show – and a network – already struggling in a rapidly declining US cable news sector. The following morning, broadcast viewing figures for the network plummeted 38%, according to Nielsen Media Research.Yet Scarborough and Brzezinski’s about-face is just one data point in the US media landscape that shows that some core elements of the press in America may be recalibrating its approach to how it covers the second Trump administration and where the all-in oppositional attitude that defined much of the press in his first term is in retreat.Yet the moves come after an election campaign in which Trump frequently attacked the media and dubbed them “enemies of the people”. It comes as his allies have threatened to curb the press and attack their media critics. They have also already launched a wave of multibillion-dollar lawsuits against a host of media companies for their coverage that they often baselessly claim to be bias, such as Trump’s allegation that CBS misleadingly edited an interview with Kamala Harris.Certainly those threats seemed to be at play with MSNBC, which is now also facing an uncertain future as the network is being spun off by its corporate parent, Comcast. A subsequent sale would come under the purview of Trump-appointed regulators.According to Puck News, the couple’s visit to Trump’s tropical paradise was because Scarborough was said to be “petrified” that the president-elect’s Department of Justice would go after him. “That’s what this was about,” a source told the news site about the motive. “It has nothing to do with ratings or Comcast. It’s all about fear of retribution and investigation.”“It was about access and power,” said Jeff Jarvis, a media writer. “But this visit didn’t do anything for access, and they didn’t come back with anything journalistic. They were willing to throw the reputation of the show, their reputations and the reputation of the network over for their own personal fears.”But MSNBC is not alone in facing tough choices. The US media are facing numerous issues: fears over what Trump might do, complex business decisions and interests faced by their corporate owners, and also an understanding that the president-elect won the popular vote, showing that their audiences exist beyond the safe havens of Trump criticism.But these are choppy waters. The Washington Post, famed for bringing down Richard Nixon, has been the focus of controversy under its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, and the British journalist, Will Lewis, he has tasked with running the once-storied brand.The Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers after it declined to make a presidential endorsement. Bezos defended the decision, triggering suspicion that Amazon’s role as a defense industry data cloud contractor had played a part. But since Trump won, Lewis has not changed tack and a longstanding and widely respected political editor at the paper was reportedly removed from his job last week.The Post’s controversy has played at the same time as the Los Angeles Times made a similar call to block an endorsement of Kamala Harris, also triggering widespread dismay in the newsroom and a questioning of how critical of Trump the newspaper would continue to be.The Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, framed the matter as an attempt at neutrality, though his activist daughter Nika Soon-Shiong also said the decision was informed by Harris’s continued support for Israel as it wars in Gaza – which he later confirmed in an internal email.After years of anti-Trump coverage under Jeff Zucker, CNN is also effecting course-correction. Last week, the cable news giant’s Dana Bash said it was unclear whether a group of men carrying swastika flags marching in Columbus, Ohio, belonged to the far right or far left.“A group of neo-Nazis paraded through that city wearing, waving swastikas, covering their faces,” Bash said. “We don’t know what side of the aisle this comes from. I mean, typically neo-Nazis are from the far right.” The statement immediately attracted ridicule for its seemingly bizarre attempt at neutrality.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome at the New York Times, too, are offering a more ameliorated tone than under the first Trump administration, even as the paper has continued to break stories on Trump’s preparations to return to power. The columnist David Brooks advocated soon after the election that Trump is a “sower of chaos, not fascism”, adding: “In chaos there’s opportunity for a new society and a new response to the Trumpian political, economic and psychological assault.”It is certainly a complex challenge. The media’s symbiotic relationship with Trump was both nurturing and self-destructive the first time around as readerships boomed, but a significant chunk of the population – the chunk that delivered Trump back into the White House – became even more hostile to the mainstream media and embraced the idea it was “fake news”.The news industry in the US, with a few exceptions, is on life support as audiences fracture and social media traffic referrals dry up. Social media is more trusted by the public, and the press is now facing a second hostile Trump administration with diminished resources.But would a more restrained approach work? Would it attract readers previously hostile to the media, and would it blunt any attacks from the Trump administration?Some are skeptical.“You’re trying to pursue readers you’ll never have and in the process pissing off the readers you do have,” Jarvis, the media writer, said of outlets playing it safe on Trump. “That’s the paradox – mass media still believes in the mass media. The challenge for journalism now is for people to feel heard and a separation from the power structures of politics and money.”The only network firmly in a good place appears to be rightwing Fox News, which dominated 24-hour news broadcasting through the election cycle and seems confident of its identity as America returns to life under a Trump presidency.Fox News finished the week of 11-17 November with its highest share of the cable news audience in the network’s 28-year history across multiple categories, while MSNBC saw its lowest-rated week in quarter of a century.For some observers, all this makes for worrying times ahead as America confronts a president with openly autocratic sympathies and a radical rightwing agenda.“The press is going to find itself in an existential battle for its own integrity if it does not decide to confront and challenge Trump top to bottom. There’s no way a truly free press can be neutral about lies and broken civic norms and survive,” said Jim Sleeper, author and retired lecturer in political science at Yale University.“If the populace has decided to trade in its freedom and rights for stability and security that authoritarians always promise, then the press has to make a choice and decide that honest journalists are dissidents.” More

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      Nicolle Wallace Calls on George W. Bush to Denounce Trump

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      Nicolle Wallace, who was a White House communications director in George W. Bush’s administration, called on Friday for Mr. Bush to have a late-hour “change of heart” and speak out against former President Donald J. Trump.Speaking on her “Deadline: White House” program on MSNBC, Ms. Wallace said Mr. Trump’s violent language about former Representative Liz Cheney had pushed her to publicly raise the question she gets “asked more than any other” off the set: “Where is George W. Bush?”Ms. Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, has emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent Republican critics, and she has campaigned extensively for his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Her father, Dick Cheney, who served as Mr. Bush’s vice president, has also said he would vote for Ms. Harris.On Thursday, Mr. Trump criticized Ms. Cheney for her hawkish foreign policy views and said she should be put on a battlefield “with nine barrels shooting at her” — a remark that drew condemnations from a number of leaders. On her program, Ms. Wallace seemed to be imploring her former boss to join that group.“These are the comments we’re talking about right now in the United States of America from someone running to hold the job he had,” Ms. Wallace said.Mr. Bush’s daughter Barbara also supports Ms. Harris and has knocked on doors for her in Pennsylvania.But Mr. Bush has ruled out endorsing in the presidential race, according to his office. Ms. Wallace said she hoped both Mr. Trump’s recent violent language and the endorsement of Ms. Harris by Mr. Bush’s daughter might sway him.“We have a right to hope that those who have stood for freedom and celebrated those who have protected it might have a last-minute change of heart in the closing hours of this campaign,” Ms. Wallace said on her program.Ms. Wallace said she had appealed directly to Mr. Bush’s office, and had been told that the former president would continue his silence. But she said that it felt “important” to make her appeal, and then showed a series of decades-old videos of Mr. Bush speaking about freedom.A spokesman for Mr. Bush, Freddy Ford, said on Friday that Mr. Bush had no comment on Ms. Wallace’s plea. Last month, Mr. Ford said in an email that Mr. Bush “retired from presidential politics many years ago” and would not endorse in the presidential race.Ms. Wallace said she was delivering her call in the spirit of a lesson Mr. Bush had imparted to her: “Leave everything I know how to do in service of our democracy and freedoms — the things he taught us to cherish — on the field.”In an interview last week with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, Ms. Cheney said she could not “explain why George W. Bush hasn’t spoken out.”“But I think it’s time,” Ms. Cheney said. “And I wish that he would.” More

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      3 Takeaways From Kamala Harris’s Interview on MSNBC

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      As Vice President Kamala Harris parses out the details of her agenda, she has favored broad strokes over detailed policy papers. Only recently has she begun sitting for interviews, which have elicited few details about what her presidential administration might look like.Little about that careful approach changed during a 25-minute interview with Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC that was broadcast on Wednesday night. It was Ms. Harris’s first one-on-one interview on cable television since becoming the Democratic nominee.In her discussion with a friendly interviewer, the vice president again presented herself as a champion of the middle class and hit many of the same themes from her pro-business economic speech earlier in the day. She largely avoided direct questions about how she would govern and why some voters remain fond of former President Donald J. Trump’s stewardship of the economy.Here are three takeaways from Ms. Harris’s interview.Harris had roundabout answers to open-ended questions.Ms. Ruhle’s first question was about how Ms. Harris might respond to people who hear her proposals and say, “These policies aren’t for me.” The MSNBC host’s second was about why voters tend to tell pollsters that Mr. Trump is better equipped to handle the economy.Ms. Harris responded to the fairly basic and predictable questions with roundabout responses that did not provide a substantive answer.Instead of offering any explanation for why Mr. Trump polls better on the economy — a matter that has vexed Democrats as President Biden has overseen a steadily improving economy — Ms. Harris instead blasted Mr. Trump’s record. She blamed him for a loss of manufacturing and autoworker jobs and said his tariff proposals would serve as an added sales tax on American consumers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris’s DNC Speech Seen by 29 Million, Slightly More Than Trump at RNC

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      Overall, TV viewership of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was up 14 percent from the Republicans’ event last month.Maybe it was curiosity about the untested candidate who took command of the ticket at the last minute, or the cameos by TV-ready celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Mindy Kaling and Kerry Washington. The runaway (and ultimately misguided) speculation that Beyoncé might make an appearance certainly did not hurt.Whatever the reason, Democrats notched a victory this week in one of the year’s biggest media bouts: Which party’s political convention would attract more viewers?The four-day celebration in Chicago of Vice President Kamala Harris was watched on TV by an average of 21.8 million viewers across four nights, Nielsen said on Friday. That was 14 percent more than the Republicans’ jamboree last month in Milwaukee, a four-day tribute to former President Donald J. Trump.The gap between the conventions, however, narrowed on the final day, when the presidential nominees delivered their climactic remarks. On Thursday, the night of Ms. Harris’s acceptance speech, 26.2 million people tuned in. On the evening in July when Mr. Trump spoke, in his first extensive address since surviving an assassination attempt, 25.4 million watched — a difference of only 3 percent.On its own, Ms. Harris’s 40-minute speech averaged 28.9 million TV viewers, according to Nielsen. The audience for Mr. Trump’s 92-minute address last month fell short of that figure, peaking early at 28.4 million viewers and then dwindling as the former president spoke long into the night.Live TV ratings are a useful metric of the nation’s attention economy, but they are not all-encompassing. The Nielsen data did not capture viewers who streamed the conventions on their phones or laptops. Democrats, in particular, encouraged podcasters and social media influencers to post short videos from Chicago in the hopes of reaching voters who do not watch traditional TV.This year’s convention ratings also underscored the continuing flight toward partisanship in television news.Just as Fox News crushed its network rivals in the ratings race during the Republican convention — beating MSNBC and CNN combined — the Democratic convention had one clear winner: MSNBC. The cable home of Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid, which has a fervent liberal fan base, beat every network (including ABC, CBS, and NBC) in total convention viewership.This year marked MSNBC’s largest audience for a Democratic convention since the network’s founding in 1996, a milestone achieved despite the cord-cutting that has drastically reduced the number of people who subscribe to cable in the first place.CNN has endured a tough stretch in the ratings, but its Democratic convention coverage attracted more viewers in the most coveted demographic — adults 25 to 54 years old — than any other network. (MSNBC fell just short, losing to CNN in the category by a margin of roughly 1 percent.)CNN’s new leadership is trying to appeal to more casual, and less partisan, consumers of news. It has already played a central role in this year’s campaign: It was CNN’s presidential debate in June that set off the head-spinning series of events that led to Ms. Harris’s prime-time speech on Thursday. More

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      Hillary Clinton Accuses Protesters of Ignorance of Mideast History

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      In an interview on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” on Thursday, Ms. Clinton criticized student protesters, saying many were ignorant of the history of the Middle East, the United States and the world.Hillary Clinton on Thursday criticized campus protesters, saying young people “don’t know very much” about the history of the Middle East.“I have had many conversations, as you have had, with a lot of young people over the last many months now,” she said on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” on Thursday. “They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history, in many areas of the world, including in our own country.”Ms. Clinton then went on to imply that young people “don’t know” that had Yasir Arafat, the former leader of the Palestinian Authority, accepted a deal brokered by her husband, President Bill Clinton, the Palestinians would already have a state of their own. “It’s one of the great tragedies of history that he was unable to say yes,” she said.The comments, made in response to a sprawling question about radicalization on university campuses from the host, Joe Scarborough, were criticized on social media by those who said that Ms. Clinton, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, was underestimating students’ capacity.While some said they agreed with Ms. Clinton, others described her characterization of the failure of the Oslo peace process — a yearslong attempt to negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine that began in 1993 but ultimately failed — as an oversimplification.“For Clinton to say this is really disingenuous,” Osamah F. Khalil, a professor of history and Middle East expert at Syracuse University, said in an interview. He noted that in the lead-up to the summit at Camp David in 2000, where negotiations ultimately faltered, Mr. Arafat had warned former president Bill Clinton that “the two sides were not ready.” To lay blame squarely on the Palestinians was unfair, he added, noting that there had been other missed opportunities for a solution. “Diplomacy is not a one-time mattress sale,” Prof. Khalil said.Ms. Clinton’s comments about the students failed to give them, or the elite institutions at which many are protesting, due credit, he said.The comments come after students walked out of Ms. Clinton’s class in November to protest what they perceived as the school’s role in publicly shaming students who had signed a statement saying the Israeli government bore responsibility for the war. Last month, others disrupted Ms. Clinton’s visit to her alma mater, Wellesley College. More

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      For Cesar Conde, NBC’s News Chief, Corporate Polish Meets Partisan Reality

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      Cesar Conde, a leader with an M.B.A. but a limited journalism background, is facing the toughest scrutiny of his career.Cesar Conde is not the typical leader of a major news institution.A Wharton-trained executive who revived the fortunes of Telemundo and sits on the boards of Pepsi and Walmart, Mr. Conde had limited experience in journalism when, in 2020, he became the chairman of NBC’s sprawling news division, including MSNBC, CNBC and franchises like “Meet the Press,” “Nightly News” and the “Today” show.Now he is trying to navigate the biggest crisis of his tenure: a journalistic firestorm that prompted an open revolt among his stars and has fueled internal questions about just how neatly Mr. Conde’s corporate experience and ambitions gel with the unique challenges of the news business.The rapid hiring and dismissal of Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, stunned network journalists over the past week, with many asking why Mr. Conde and his deputies had brought on someone who had vilified NBC and advanced former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The blowback facing Mr. Conde, 50, a former fellow in George W. Bush’s White House who prides himself on having an even-keeled, nonpartisan reputation, is coming from both sides of the aisle. Left-leaning fans of MSNBC felt betrayed, and Republican officials are mocking NBC as biased, even threatening to bar its reporters from this summer’s nominating convention.At elite retreats like the Aspen Ideas Festival, Mr. Conde, who declined to be interviewed, likes to say he runs “the largest news organization in the country.” As he heads into the scrutiny of a general-election campaign, he is discovering just how hard that job can be.Two of Mr. Conde’s newsroom leaders — Rebecca Blumenstein, the NBC News president of editorial, and Carrie Budoff Brown, who oversees political coverage — recommended Ms. McDaniel to Mr. Conde; Rashida Jones, the MSNBC president, also signed off, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Conde trusted the judgment of his top journalists, the people said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ronna McDaniel and NBC Saga: The Perks and Perils of Partisan Talk on TV

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      Why are television news networks so enamored with paid Beltway analysts?Trying to juice ratings in an election year, a major TV network hired a pair of provocative commentators from the political establishment to inject some spiky opinion into its otherwise-staid campaign coverage.The result — the Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. debates of 1968 — was a hit with viewers and an unexpected success for ABC News. It also inspired television news divisions to bring more partisan voices into their coverage, a trend that intensified at the dawn of the 24-hour cable news era in the early 1980s.These days, the role of the “paid contributor” — a commentator on contract, to bloviate on demand — is fully baked into the TV news ecosystem. Typically, the role is occupied by a political veteran who can offer an insider perspective on the news of the day, drawing on experience as, say, an elected official, Beltway strategist or West Wing aide.Or, in the case of Ronna McDaniel, as the former chairwoman of the Republican Party.Ms. McDaniel’s tenure as a paid contributor at NBC News was less successful than those of many of her peers. (Her two immediate predecessors as Republican leader, Michael Steele and Reince Priebus, work for MSNBC and ABC News.) Her hiring led to an open revolt by NBC and MSNBC stars, who said it was disqualifying that Ms. McDaniel had been involved in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election results.She was ousted by NBC on Tuesday, four days after she started. Ms. McDaniel, whose deal was worth $300,000 annually, is now seeking to be paid at least $600,000 for the two years she signed up for, according to a person familiar with her plans.The episode prompted angst inside NBC News, where journalists and producers on Wednesday were still puzzling over their bosses’ handling of the situation, according to several people who requested anonymity to discuss private discussions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Pretty bad’: NBC condemned by top US historian over role for Ronna McDaniel

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      The Republican National Committee chair turned NBC politics analyst Ronna McDaniel “tried to disassemble our democracy” by supporting Donald Trump’s electoral fraud lies and should not be given such a media role, a leading historian said amid uproar over the appointment.“What NBC has done is they’ve invited into what should be a normal framework someone who doesn’t believe that framework should exist at all,” Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor and author of On Tyranny, told MSNBC, part of the network now employing McDaniel.On Friday, NBC announced it had hired the former RNC chair and the network’s senior vice-president for politics, Carrie Budoff Brown, said that McDaniel would contribute her analysis “across all NBC News platforms”.“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, someone who … tried to disassemble our democracy. Who personally took part in an attempt to undo the American system,” Synder said.“And so … what NBC is doing is saying, ‘Well, [it] 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 has already taken part in an attempt to take our system down.’“So, yeah, I think this is pretty bad.”On Sunday, days after joining the network, McDaniel said on the Meet the Press that Biden won “fair and square” and said she did “not think violence should be in our political discourse”.But McDaniel also claimed it was “fair to say there were problems [elections in battleground states] in 2020” and said she had supported Trump’s election fraud lies as a way of “taking one for the whole team” .That stoked an on-air protest from Chuck Todd, a former Meet the Press host. On Monday, MSNBC hosts including Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Nicole Wallace, to whom Snyder spoke, also condemned the McDaniel hire. The day also saw a protest from a union group representing NBC News staff.McDaniel and NBC did not comment.Snyder, who has written for the Guardian, said: “If you are going to be on American media, you should be somebody who believes there is something called truth, there are things called facts and you can pursue them. You shouldn’t be someone who has over and over and over again pushed the idea of fake news, educated Americans away from the facts, away from belief in the facts.”Describing such work by McDaniel, the anti-Trump conservative ex-congresswoman Liz Cheney said that as RNC chair, McDaniel “facilitated Trump’s corrupt fake elector plot and his effort to pressure Michigan officials not to certify the legitimate election outcome. She spread his lies and called January 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’. That’s not ‘taking one for the team’. It’s enabling criminality and depravity.”McDaniel became RNC chair in January 2017. In that role, she defended Trump through his scandal-ridden presidency; his refusal to accept his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, culminating in his incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress; and through his surge to another presidential nomination despite facing 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties and regularly admitting to authoritarian ambitions.Despite such support, Trump last month pushed McDaniel out of the RNC, to be replaced by his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.Snyder said: “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 ourselves, ‘Why is it that we are taking this step to bring people into the middle of our discussion?’“So my two red lines are, you should be somebody who’s 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 what we’re talking about here. We shouldn’t mince words about it.” More