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      Joe Lieberman, former US senator and vice-presidential nominee, dies at 82

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      The former US senator Joe Lieberman, who ran as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in the 2000 election and became the first Jewish candidate on a major-party ticket for the White House, alongside presidential candidate Al Gore, has died at the age of 82.Lieberman died in New York due to complications from a fall, according to a statement from his family. He was a Connecticut senator for four terms.Lieberman took one of the most controversial arcs in recent US political history. Though he had the status of a breakthrough candidate for America’s Jewish community as Gore’s running mate, his support for president George W Bush’s Iraq war heralded a rightward journey that saw him anger many Democrats.Lieberman sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 but his support for the war in Iraq doomed his candidacy with voters, amid increasing anger at the invasion and its bloody aftermath. It also meant Lieberman was rejected by Connecticut’s Democrats when he ran for a fourth Senate term there in 2006.However, in what he said was a vindication of his positions, he kept his Senate seat by running as an independent candidate, with substantial support from Republican and independent voters.By 2008, Lieberman was a high-profile supporter of Republican senator John McCain in his bid to defeat Democrat Barack Obama’s quest to become America’s first Black president.Thus Lieberman did manage to both impress and offend people across party lines. He expressed strong support for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights and environmental causes that often won him praise of many Democrats, and he frequently fit mould of a north-east liberal. He played a key role in legislation that established the US Department of Homeland Security.He was also the first national Democrat to publicly criticize President Bill Clinton for his extramarital affair with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He scolded Clinton for “disgraceful behavior”, earning the ire of his party – though his position has become much more standard in the wake of the #MeToo movement.As he sought a political home outside Democratic politics, Lieberman’s close friend in the Senate John McCain was leaning strongly toward choosing him as vice-president for the 2008 Republican ticket, but Lieberman’s history of liberal policies were seen as too unpopular for McCain to pull off such a move with his conservative base. He plumped for Sarah Palin instead.In announcing his retirement from the Senate in 2013, Lieberman acknowledged that he did “not always fit comfortably into conventional political boxes” and felt his first responsibility was to serve his constituents, state and country, not his political party.Harry Reid, who served as Senate Democratic leader, once said that while he didn’t always agree with the independent-minded Lieberman, he respected him.“Regardless of our differences, I have never doubted Joe Lieberman’s principles or his patriotism,” Reid said. “And I respect his independent streak, as it stems from strong convictions.”After leaving the Senate, Lieberman joined a New York law firm and took up company boards – as is common for retiring senators. But his public positions continued to be a mish-mash of liberal and rightwing views.View image in fullscreenHe endorsed Donald Trump’s controversial decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and was a public supporter of Trump’s rightwing education secretary Betsy DeVos – a hated figure for many liberals. But at the same time, he endorsed Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 in their runs for the White House.Lieberman continued to push his message of compromise with his 2021 book The Centrist Solution, comparing far-right extremists to progressive leftists in a Guardian interview at the time, saying: “The divisive forces in both of our two major parties have moved further away from the centre. But I believe those more extreme segments of both parties are in the minority in both parties.”He also said he was optimistic that “more mainstream, centrist elements” in the Republican party would take over again.He remained active in recent years as the founding chairman of No Labels, an organization to encourage bipartisanship but which is currently exploring backing a third-party bid for the presidency as Trump and Biden face off again. Faced with criticisms that the group’s efforts could boost Trump’s chance at victory, Lieberman said last year he did not want to see Trump re-elected, but that he believed Democrats would fare better if Biden was not running. In recent weeks, No Labels has struggled to find a candidate as ballot deadlines near.Lieberman grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where his father operated a liquor store. He was the eldest of three siblings in an Orthodox Jewish family. A Yale law school graduate, Lieberman went on to serve as Connecticut attorney general in 1983, before defeating the incumbent Republican, Lowell Weicker, to earn his Senate seat in 1988.Tributes poured in from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday night. Chris Murphy, a US senator from Connecticut, said in a statement that his state was “shocked by Senator Lieberman’s sudden passing”, adding: “In an era of political carbon copies, Joe Lieberman was a singularity. One of one. He fought and won for what he believed was right and for the state he adored.”Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and oldest sitting senator at 90, recalled working with Lieberman on whistleblower initiatives, saying in a statement: “Joe was a dedicated public servant working [with] anyone regardless of political stripe.”Gore published a tribute praising Lieberman as a “truly gifted leader, whose affable personality and strong will made him a force to be reckoned with”, recounting his former running mate’s support of the 1960s civil rights movement.Obama wrote that he and Lieberman “didn’t always see eye-to-eye”, but commended the former senator for supporting the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the passage of the Affordable Care Act: “In both cases the politics were difficult, but he stuck to his principles because he knew it was the right thing to do.”Paul Harris and the Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Trump mocks ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel for being fired by NBC

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      Donald Trump mocked the former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel, for her firing by NBC days after being hired as a political analyst.“Wow!” the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, who ejected McDaniel from the RNC in favour of his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, wrote on his Truth Social platform.“Ronna McDaniel got fired by Fake News NBC. She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear. It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”McDaniel’s hiring was announced by NBC last Friday. Interviewed on Meet the Press on Sunday, she disavowed Trump’s lie that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election but also claimed there were electoral “problems” in battleground states.Protests from on-air talent and an NBC union group also concerned McDaniel’s combative relations with the press in seven years as RNC chair, a period coinciding with Trump’s takeover of the Republican party. On Tuesday evening McDaniel was gone – giving her a four-day NBC career, not the two claimed by Trump.Cesar Conde, chair of NBCUniversal News, told staff: “No organisation, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”Trump said: “These Radical Left Lunatics are CRAZY, and the top people at NBC ARE WEAK. They were BROKEN and EMBARRASSED by LOW RATINGS, HIGHLY OVERPAID, ‘TALENT.’ BRING BACK FREE AND FAIR PRESS.”Other rightwingers, and media figures, cried foul too.Hugh Hewitt, a talkshow host, told Fox News: “I have never seen anything this brutal since I got started in media in 1990.“Ronna is going to sue everyone who defamed her, for breach of contract, for intentional infliction of mental distress. They are going to sue for the destruction of her business opportunities that come from being on TV. I think they made a terrible decision, and they allowed the MSNBC bleed to take over their network.”On NewsNation, the former Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera accused the MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow of “malignant wokeism”, saying: “God did not anoint her the arbiter of who was appropriate for her network to hire or what their point of view is.”Liberal retorts concerned the chief issue cited by Maddow, Chuck Todd, Jen Psaki, Joy Reid, Nicole Wallace and other hosts: McDaniel’s support for Trump’s election subversion, including direct involvement in his attempt to nullify Biden’s win in Michigan.“Ronna McDaniel’s desperate attempt to whitewash her record as an election-denying Maga enabler was an insult to independent journalism and to any American who values the truth,” Alex Floyd, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Fortunately, much like her and Donald Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, she failed. It’s embarrassing that anyone would try to give McDaniel and her lies a soapbox after she spent years demonstrating such a blatant disregard for the truth, not to mention our entire democratic system. Proven liars who put loyalty to a political demagogue over our democracy have no place in politics – or in the media.”McDaniel did not comment. Politico reported that she was considering legal options and expected to be paid in full for her reported $600,000 two-year deal, which would in effect net her $500 a second for her Meet the Press interview.A “person close to McDaniel” was quoted as saying: “The part that pisses me off most about this is not necessarily that [NBC executives] folded: it’s [that] they allowed their talent to drag Ronna through the mud and make it seem like they were innocent bystanders.”For NBC executives, the pain may not be over. Though Semafor reported a senior Republican aide as saying “No one really cares about Ronna”, her firing has handed her party a potent campaign issue.Semafor also reported anger among NBC staffers.“Political reporters here didn’t take part in the backlash, nor did they get to give input on the hire,” an unnamed journalist was quoted as saying. “But they’ll be the ones who have to pick up the pieces with sources dismayed with the organisation.” More

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      RNC asks job applicants if they believe 2020 election was stolen in ‘litmus test’

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      A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and Donald Trump did not deny a Washington Post report that said prospective RNC employees are being asked if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, constituting a “litmus test” as the 2024 election approaches.“Candidates who worked on the frontline in battleground states or are currently in states where fraud allegations have been prevalent were asked about their work experience,” Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for the RNC and Trump, said in a statement.“We want experienced staff with meaningful views on how elections are won and lost and real experience-based opinions about what happens in the trenches.”Trump has pursued his stolen election lie through his conclusive defeat by Biden; his attempts to overturn results in key states; his incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress; his resulting impeachment and acquittal; his attempts to delay or avoid trial on four federal and 10 state criminal charges concerning election subversion; and his surge to a third successive presidential nomination.He extended control over the RNC last month with the replacement of Ronna McDaniel by new co-chairs, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Michael Whatley, a loyalist from North Carolina.Lara Trump told NBC on Tuesday the RNC was “past” disputing the 2020 election, adding: “The past is the past and unfortunately we had to learn a couple of hard lessons in 2020.”But the Post said Trump aides were now asking election lie questions as they assess which former staffers will be rehired, as the presidential election grinds into gear.Other questions for prospective hires focused on “election integrity” in the 2024 contest, the Post said.Speaking to the Post, an unnamed prospective employee said two top Trump advisers posed the question directly, asking: “Was the 2020 election stolen?”Two unnamed sources said questions were left open-ended.“But if you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” a former RNC employee was quoted as saying.CNN said it confirmed the Post report, saying sources described the 2020 question “as unusual for a job interview” but saw it as a way of “questioning their loyalty to Donald Trump”. Alvarez repeated her non-denial to CNN.Doug Heye, a former RNC communications director, told the Post it was not unusual for staff to be expected to “back the candidate up and go along with the worldview”.But Bill Kristol, anti-Trump conservative commentator, said prospective hires would now have “no excuse for wanting to work [at the RNC] in 2024”, given its open embrace of Trump’s election lie. More

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      US supreme court seems skeptical of arguments against abortion drug mifepristone

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      The supreme court on Tuesday seemed skeptical of arguments made by anti-abortion doctors asking it to roll back the availability of mifepristone, a drug typically used in US medication abortion. The arguments were part of the first major abortion case to reach the justices since a 6-3 majority ruled in 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade and end the national right to abortion.The rightwing groups that brought the case argued that the justices should roll back measures taken since 2016 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand the drug’s availability. A decision in the anti-abortion doctors’ favor would apply nationwide, including in states that protect abortion access, and would probably make the drug more difficult to acquire.Medication abortion now accounts for almost two-thirds of abortions performed in the US.Much of Tuesday’s arguments focused on whether the anti-abortion doctors who sued the FDA, a coalition known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, have standing, or the right to bring the case in the first place. The doctors claim they will suffer harm if they have to treat women who experience complications from mifepristone, an argument the Biden administration, which appealed the case to the court, has rejected as too speculative.The US solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the FDA, argued that the doctors do not come within “100 miles” of having the legal right to bring the case, arguing that their case rests on a “long chain of remote contingencies”. Under their argument, Prelogar said, a woman would have to face complications from a medication abortion that were so serious that she needed emergency care at a hospital – an unlikely scenario, given mifepristone’s proven safety record – and then end up in the care of an anti-abortion doctor who was somehow forced into taking care of her in such a way it violated the doctor’s conscience.A number of the justices – even the ones who ruled to overturn Roe two years ago – seemed skeptical that the doctors met the threshold required to establish standing. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh seemed to seek assurances that the doctors represented by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine were already covered by laws that protect doctors from having to undertake cases that violated their consciences.Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed to express concern over the sweeping implications of the doctors’ request of the court. “This case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule or any other federal government rule,” he said.The supreme court has historically rejected standing arguments based on such potential harm. However, Justice Clarence Thomas raised the possibility that perhaps the court’s own threshold for standing was too strict.His fellow conservative Samuel Alito also seemed incredulous of Prelogar’s argument. “Is there anybody who can sue and get a judicial ruling on whether what FDA did was lawful?” he asked. “Shouldn’t somebody be able to challenge that in court?”Since the fall of Roe in June 2022, more than a dozen states have banned abortion. The result has been legal and medical chaos. Dozens of women have come forward to say that they were denied medically necessary abortions. Abortion clinics in states that still allow abortion are overwhelmed by the flood of patients fleeing states with bans. More than 1m abortions were performed in the US in 2023, a record high.The availability of medication abortions, which are usually performed using mifepristone as well as another drug called misoprostol, has helped soften the impact of the bans. Telehealth medication abortions, permitted by the FDA since the pandemic, helped ease some of the burden on abortion clinics; shield laws, passed in a handful of states, even allowed providers to offer telehealth abortions to people living in states with abortion bans.But the accessibility of medication abortion also made it the next target of the anti-abortion movement after Roe was overturned. In 2022 the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine challenged the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone. The group, which includes anti-abortion doctors and is being defended by the Christian powerhouse legal firm the Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that the FDA overstepped its authority and that mifepristone is unsafe. (More than 100 studies have concluded that mifepristone can be safely used to terminate a pregnancy.)A federal judge ruled in favor of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a move that could have yanked mifepristone off the market entirely. But an appeals court narrowed that ruling, deciding that it was too late to challenge mifepristone’s original 2000 approval.Instead, the appeals court ruled to rewind later measures taken by the FDA that expanded access to mifepristone, including by removing requirements that abortion providers dispense mifepristone in person. A recent analysis found 16% of all US abortions are facilitated through telehealth.Mifepristone’s availability has remained unchanged as litigation has progressed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring oral arguments, Thomas and Alito also raised the specter of the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-vice law that bans the mailing of abortion-related materials. Long regarded as a relic, the Comstock Act has now seen a resurgence of post-Roe support among anti-abortion activists who believe it is the key to a de facto nationwide abortion ban.“How do you respond to an argument that mailing your product and advertising it would violate the Comstock Act?” Thomas asked Jessica Ellsworth, a lawyer for Danco Laboratories, a manufacturer of mifepristone.After some back and forth, Ellsworth told Thomas: “That statute has not been forced for nearly 100 years and I don’t believe that this case presents an opportunity for the court to opine on the reach of the statute.”Regardless of what the supreme court decides, Americans will still be able to order mifepristone online from suppliers who help people “self-manage” their own abortions. A study released on Monday found self-managed abortions had soared since Roe fell.Outrage over the overturning of Roe has turned abortion into a key election issue, since most Americans support at least some degree of abortion access. Voters in multiple states, including conservative strongholds, have voted in ballot initiatives in favor of abortion rights; roughly a dozen states are now expected to put abortion-related ballot measures to voters come November. Democrats are hoping that the issue will bolster turnout for their candidates, including Joe Biden.The supreme court is expected to issue a ruling in the mifepristone case by the summer, just months ahead of the 2024 elections.The case’s consequences could stretch far beyond abortion. If the justices greenlight attempts by ideologically driven groups to second-guess the authority of the FDA, the agency’s regulation of all manner of drugs – such as contraception and vaccines – could be challenged in court.Ellsworth, the Danco attorney, argued that the doctors’ argument in the case “is so inflexible it would upend not just mifepristone, but virtually every drug approval”. More

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      The Guardian view on the UN security council’s ceasefire resolution: the US talks tougher on Israel | Editorial

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      The extent of the Biden administration’s shift at the United Nations security council on Monday should not be underestimated. The US is not only by far Israel’s most important ally and supplier of aid, but has provided it with stalwart diplomatic support. That it abstained instead of vetoing a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire – as it had previously done – was a major departure and leaves Israel looking extremely isolated, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s angry reaction showed.Yet the US has since done its best to talk down its decision, with officials insisting that there has been no change in policy and describing the resolution as non-binding. That is not the view of other security council members or the UN itself. António Guterres, the UN secretary general, wrote that it would be “unforgivable” to fail to implement the resolution, which also called for the unconditional release of hostages. But Israeli airstrikes have continued.The Biden administration is well aware that this war is ravaging its international standing: it is judged both complicit in the suffering in Gaza and ineffectual in its ability to restrain Israel’s conduct of the war. At home, it is costing the president vital Democratic support in an election year. But more Americans believe that Israel’s conduct of the war is acceptable than unacceptable, although there is a clear – and generational – divide.Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, has already said that he will invite Mr Netanyahu to speak before Congress. Though many in Israel fully understand the long-term damage the Israeli prime minister has done to his country’s interests as he fights for his own, there is no sign that US exasperation will speed his departure or moderate the conduct of this war.While the Biden administration treads gingerly, the humanitarian catastrophe gallops ahead in Gaza. The UN resolution stipulates a ceasefire for Ramadan – already half passed. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Disease and starvation are claiming more lives as the most intense famine since the second world war takes hold – a famine entirely human-made by the destruction of so much of Gaza and the reduction of aid to a trickle. Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees central to relief efforts, has said that Israel has banned it from making aid deliveries in northern Gaza.Mr Biden has described the placing of conditions on US military aid as a “worthwhile thought”, but it does not appear to be one that he intends to translate into reality, though past administrations have threatened or imposed them. Recipients of arms must now give assurances that they abide by international law, but the US says it has “no evidence” that Israel is not in compliance. Many Democrats disagree.Canada has already announced that it is suspending further sales. The UK shifted from abstaining to supporting the ceasefire resolution on Monday, and David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has urged the Foreign Office to publish its formal legal advice on whether Israel is breaching international law in Gaza. The reality is, however, that 99% of Israel’s arms imports come from the US and Germany. Hand-wringing over humanitarian suffering is pointless when you continue to supply the weapons creating the disaster. Monday’s abstention was an important symbolic moment, but it appears that little will alter unless the US makes a substantive change.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Can NBC News recover from its damaging decision to hire Ronna McDaniel? | Margaret Sullivan

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      As boneheaded corporate decisions go, the one by NBC News to bring on Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor is right up there.Whatever twisted purpose hiring the former Republican National Committee (RNC) chairperson was meant to accomplish has been lost. That may have been gaining access to Republican bigwigs, sending a cynical message of ideological diversity or boosting ratings.Instead, the network has badly damaged its reputation and credibility. The hire makes a statement that, for this major US news organization, there are no consequences – rather, a juicy reward – for public figures who continually lie to the press and citizens. Her contract is reportedly worth $300,000.Hiring McDaniel – a powerful election denialist who joined then president Donald Trump in pressuring voting officials not to certify the 2020 election – was like putting a standing chyron on the NBC Nightly News: “Lying is rewarded here.”Of course, some commentators defended it, like Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who praised McDaniel’s “insider’s perspective”. He was shot down on Twitter/X by the scholar Norman Ornstein: “This is not about somebody with alternative views. It’s about a serial liar who intimidated election workers, tried to alter the election results in 2020 and has behaved in an utterly despicable fashion.”Social media memes also rose to the moment: Ronna McDaniel as politics commentator? Why not bring in OJ Simpson to host a show on preventing domestic violence, or hire Vladimir Putin as a Ukraine war commentator? How about a regular show for Ginni Thomas, the insurrection cheerleader married to a corrupt US supreme court justice?After four days of embarrassing news stories about the hire and its backlash, and some feeble efforts at damage control, it’s clear that the network should reverse course and ditch McDaniel or – depending on the terms of her contract – keep her entirely off the air. And that goes not just for the left-leaning MSNBC cable channel, but for the mainstream NBC News shows as well.And that’s not enough.The brass at NBC News needs to take stronger action in a statement – and a brief televised appearance by a top network executive or news leader – that affirms the commitment to covering politics truthfully and rigorously. It could appear once at the top of the nightly news and once on, let’s say, Morning Joe and Meet the Press.Then, go further. Prove that commitment in the network’s presidential campaign coverage. How? By using extreme care in giving a platform and a megaphone to proven liars, including the former president, and by providing sustained coverage about the stakes of the election, not just the horserace.Kristen Welker made a good start on Sunday’s Meet the Press, which she hosts. In a news interview recorded weeks before McDaniels’ hire, Welker respectfully but tenaciously grilled the former RNC chair.Insisting that she hasn’t really changed, McDaniel told Welker that she now acknowledges that Joe Biden won the election fair and square. Welker – perhaps channelling one of her predecessors, Tim Russert – wisely went to the tape, specifically McDaniel’s words to Chris Wallace in 2023: “I don’t think he won it fair.”McDaniel infamously joined Trump in a phone call pressuring two Michigan canvassers not to certify the election results; and her RNC led the charge to censure Republican members of Congress Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the House of Representatives January 6 investigation. All while disparaging the media.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Chuck Todd of NBC put it: “Many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination.”Todd, on Sunday’s Meet the Press, said he thought NBC owed Welker an apology for putting her in an impossible position. And Mark Jacob, a former Chicago Tribune editor, called in his newsletter, Stop the Presses, for the network to apologize to the public.These apologies would be welcome, but the main thing is to acknowledge the error in judgment and make sure that no habitual liars or enemies of democracy – whether paid or unpaid – get to blather their way to November’s election.Truth-telling in the media always matters. It matters intensely right now, as American democracy teeters on the brink.NBC should affirm that core mission. In so doing, the network could earn itself a lot of goodwill and recover from this blunder. All while doing the right thing.After all, it’s one thing to screw up. It’s another to dig your heels in.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture 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

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      Ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel: Biden won 2020 election ‘fair and square’

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      A little more than two weeks after resigning as the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel admitted Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election over her party’s candidate “fair and square”.But the newly hired NBC News contributor maintained it was acceptable to also say there were “problems” in the manner that the US president defeated Donald Trump – even after the former president’s supporters translated such sentiments into the January 6 Capitol attack in 2021 that has been linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides.McDaniel delivered her contradictory remarks Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press in what was her debut on the network as a paid pundit. Show moderator Kristen Welker spent much of the session pushing McDaniel to address why she had waited until now to concede that Biden justly defeated Trump in 2020 – and to express disapproval over Trump’s promise to free those who were convicted or still facing charges in connection with the Capitol attack if he returned to the White House.“When you’re the RNC chair, you – you kind of take one for the whole team,” McDaniel said.And while she said: “I don’t think violence should be in our political discourse,” she also contended that it was acceptable for Republicans to continue to question certain aspects of the 2020 election.Though nonpartisan voting integrity experts consider that race to be the most secure election ever, McDaniel said it remained “a concern” for her that Pennsylvania could go from recording 260,000 mail-in ballots for Trump’s Oval Office victory in 2016 to 2.6m in 2020.McDaniel omitted mentioning that mail ballots heavily favored Biden after Trump discouraged his supporters from using mail ballots and instead urged them to vote in person.Democrats who generally obeyed measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 during that relatively early phase of the pandemic, on the other hand, availed themselves of mail ballots. Trump and his Republican allies then used the disparity in mail ballots to fuel lies about how electoral fraudsters had vaulted Biden to the presidency.Welker at one point asked whether McDaniel regretted getting on a phone call with Trump in which they apparently sought to pressure two local-level election officials in Wayne county, Michigan, to refuse to certify the state vote that Biden won. On the call, which the Detroit News reviewed late last year, McDaniel promised the officials “we will get you attorneys” as long as they declined to certify the vote.McDaniel stood by her actions on the call, saying the discussion wasn’t for the officials to decline to certify the outcome of the election in the state – but rather to demand an audit of the vote. She said what concerned her was that the officials reported being called “vile names” as well as “being threatened” when they went public with their wishes for an audit.Ultimately, McDaniel said, while she believes Biden won and is “the legitimate president”, she insisted “there were issues in 2020”.“I believe that both can be true,” McDaniel said.McDaniel’s performance did not impress former Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, who was on a panel of commentators for Sunday’s episode. He questioned the wisdom of NBC’s decision to hire McDaniel, saying to Welker: “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation … She has credibility issues that she still has to deal with.”Todd said many NBC journalists are uncomfortable with the hiring because some of their professional dealings with the RNC during McDaniel’s tenure “have been met with gaslighting, [and] have been met with character assassination”.The Wall Street Journal reported on the “internal backlash” happening within the NBC family of networks because of McDaniel’s hiring.Citing “people familiar” with the controversy, the Journal reported that the president of NBC’s sister network MSNBC, Rashida Jones, said McDaniel would not be welcome to appear on air there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMSNBC would not comment on that report on Sunday. But two of its star hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, said on Monday on their Morning Joe show that they hoped NBC “reconsiders its decision” to bring McDaniel aboard.Meanwhile, an MSNBC executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person would not publicly discuss internal matters, told the Associated Press it would be up to individual network shows to decide whether or not the bring McDaniel on – not that there is a channel-wide ban.NBC had no comment on Todd’s statement. In announcing McDaniel’s hiring on Friday, the network’s senior vice-president for politics, Carrie Budoff Brown, said that McDaniel would contribute her analysis “across all NBC News platforms”.A niece of US senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who is the only Republican to twice vote to convict Trump at his impeachment trials, McDaniel became the first woman to serve as RNC chairperson in 2017.But she resigned on 8 March, saying in part that she was stepping down to afford Trump the opportunity to select a chair of his choosing as he attempts to take back the presidency in November.The RNC subsequently installed as its chair Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trumpists’ claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was voted in as co-chair.Trump has claimed he does not intend to use the RNC to pay off the legal bills that he has run up while facing more than 80 criminal charges for election interference, retaining classified materials after leaving the Oval Office and hush-money payments. He has also been grappling with multimillion-dollar civil penalties handed to him over lawsuits centering on some of his business practices that were deemed to be fraudulent as well as a rape allegation that a judge has found to substantially true.But as the Associated Press has reported, the Trump loyalists in command of McDaniel’s former organization are in firm control of the Republican party’s political and fundraising levers without facing much – if any – internal oversight.Asked why NBC viewers should trust her voice after her RNC tenure, McDaniel said a substantial number of Americans shared her viewpoints. “I think,” she told Welker, “you should be able to hear from different voices.” More