Brooks: NBC’s fast-moving Ronna McDaniel flap shows defending U.S. democracy worth the hassle

Congratulations, NBC.

The network’s bold new “Hire a Liar” initiative is already delivering results. A divided nation has come together to agree that nobody asked for more Ronna McDaniel on their TV screens.

Faced with petitions, withering criticism and a near-revolt in the news division, NBC quickly undid its previous decision to platform an election denier who has dedicated considerable efforts to unraveling the fabric of our democracy on the say-so of former President Donald Trump.

Now that the network scratched its worst programming decision since “Manimal,” let’s review the very brief course of McDaniel’s news career.

Somebody, somewhere thought it would be a good idea to hire McDaniel, former Republican National Committee chair, as a paid commentator. If execs had waited a few months, she probably would have churned out a tell-all book, and they could have picked it up in the bargain book bin for an economical $2.99.

Instead, NBC offered McDaniel a reported six-figure salary, in the craven hope that MAGA viewers would forget the “fake news” diatribes Trump endlessly uttered and embrace the Peacock.

In the days since her debut, on-air hosts lined up in near-unison to denounce the Republican operative’s hiring.

On Monday, Lawrence O’Donnell, who once worked for a Senate Democrat, pointed out that politicians and journalists have crossed and blurred the lines between their professions so many times that it can be hard to see the line anymore. Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney went to CBS. Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki is on CNN. But the line is still there.

“I stopped inviting Trump liars like her on this program in 2016,” O’Donnell said. “Because I’ve never seen a satisfying, successful interview of a Trump liar, and have never thought that I alone could crack the code of how to interview a Trump liar. They are fast and furious liars, and I doubt that I could keep up.”

On Sunday, McDaniel popped up on Meet the Press and blithely admitted that President Joe Biden — contrary to every word she’s spoken into a microphone up to this point — won the 2020 election “fair and square.” While at the RNC, she said of her previous positions, “You kind of take one for the whole team.”

McDaniel’s hiring even prompted the unflappable Chuck Todd to wade in on live television.

“I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don’t know what to believe,” an appalled Todd told host Kristen Welker, who booked an interview with the former Republican Party chairwoman weeks ago but found herself interviewing an NBC News colleague instead. “She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. Well, I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract”

NBC News hired McDaniel even after she spent years mindlessly parroting the Trump administration’s message that the news isn’t to be trusted and journalists are to be hated. Even after the mob on Jan. 6 knotted TV cables into nooses and carved “Murder the Media” on the doors of the Capitol.

When Trump said he didn’t like her name, Ronna [REDACTED] McDaniel changed it. When Trump lied, she lied.

Speaking truth to power requires more courage than McDaniel seems capable of mustering. But the actual journalists at NBC are braver. The ones who spent years penned in the center of Trump rallies, watching their president order his followers to boo and hiss at them.

After blindsiding their staff and bruising their brand, NBC executives were at least quick to capitulate and change course.