NewsNation correspondent Geraldo Rivera ripped NBC journalists’ protest of former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel on Monday, calling the behavior “pretentious bullsh*t.”
Rivera appeared on “Cuomo” to discuss a reported “internal backlash” at NBC and MSNBC over the network’s decision to hire McDaniel as a contributor following her step down from the RNC in early March. NewsNation host Chris Cuomo questioned Rivera on his thoughts over a recent viral clip of NBC’s Chuck Todd slamming the network during a panel discussion after McDaniel was interviewed by one of the outlet’s hosts, Kristen Welker. (RELATED: Chuck Todd Unleashes On NBC Hiring Ex-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel Moments After Her Debut)
“Screw them! I mean I like everyone you just named. I don’t know Chuck Todd, but Mika [Brzezinski] and Joe [Scarborough] – and I heard Nicolle Wallace said something bad against Ronna McDaniel. I mean the whole idea is that they were hiring her to be the ultimate insider, and here she gets washed away, she gets drowned by this tsunami of pretentious bullsh*t,” Rivera stated.
“Really, all of these people that have a stick up their behinds, how dare they! And for Mika to say, NBC shouldn’t hire them? When did she become management? When did she become the arbiter of who got hired and who doesn’t get hired? And Chuck Todd, I don’t remember his nine years at ‘Meet the Press’ as being exactly triumphant.”
As alleged reports have surfaced over the upset of McDaniel’s political stances, specifically over 2020’s election integrity, Rivera continued to state that the NBC journalists’ protest is calling to alienate “half the country” as many Republicans are concerned with the issue. The NewsNation correspondent continued to state that while he doesn’t agree with McDaniel’s stance on the GOP’s direction, he believes it’s “baloney” for others to go after her.
“You know she is the ultimate insider and to say that they don’t want to hire her now because of election denialism – well then you don’t want half the country to watch your network. Because half the country is Republican, more or less, and a lot of them [believe], or at least they convinced themselves about the election being, you know, fraudulent or whatever it is,” Rivera continued.
“Now, I think that she’s wrong. I think that the Republican Party is going off the cliff, but the fact is they hired her to be who she is, who she was. And for them now, these other talent, some of them past their prime, to go after her [and] then they won’t have her? I think that’s baloney.”
Since the reports of the backlash against McDaniel, MSNBC President Rashida Jones stated that there was no intention of having “McDaniel on the channel,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski stated that McDaniel would never be invited onto her show “Morning Joe.”
Following McDaniel’s interview with Welker on Sunday, Todd called for the network’s executives to apologize to the NBC “Meet the Press” for having to interview with McDaniel. While Brzezinski called on NBC News to reconsider their decision over McDaniel, it is unclear what the network will do.