Don’t Platform These Fuckers

NBC shouldn't pay Ronna McDaniel

Image: Ronna McDaniel, photograph by Gage Skidmore, CC

NBC News announced last week that it had taken its integrity and shat upon it from the upper stratosphere by hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and insurrection apologist Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst. The move was widely criticized, not least by NBC news staff, who didn’t appreciate being spattered with all that repulsive stratosphere stink.

McDaniel was featured on Meet the Press this weekend in an interview with Kristen Welker. Chuck Todd, Mr. NBC News himself, took the opportunity to tell NBC executives that they suck. “Our bosses owe you an apology,” he told Welker, who had set up the interview before the news that McDaniel was to be her colleague. “I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract.”

Todd is not criticizing McDaniel’s opinions—not even her embrace of insurrection. Instead, he is saying she can’t be trusted because she is a liar who lies not just about facts but about her own opinions. This is a key element of Trumpism, and of far right anti-democratic movements in general.

Fascists in recent years have presented themselves as champions of free speech. But fascists actually view open, democratic debate with contempt. They do not want a free exchange of ideas, and they see liberal commitment to honest debate as a weakness to exploit. News organizations which let fascists coopt them are endangering democracy, their audiences, and their own journalists.