McDaniel’s move from politics to news isn’t unusual by standards of American television history. MSNBC’s biggest rising star is Jen Psaki, Biden’s loyal former White House press secretary. And while there are big personalities at play, this 2024 story has less to do with old-fashioned NBC personnel drama and more with inexorable political and economic forces.
Behind the move is the reality that is sinking in for U.S. corporate media, and corporate America in general: They may soon be dealing again with a Trump administration, willing to use the tools of government to reward allies and punish enemies. For the great publicly traded conglomerates like NBCUniversal Media’s parent, Comcast, that may leave little choice but to extend an olive branch to the former president.
Companies like Comcast, Disney, and WarnerMedia, which dominate U.S. television, got an object lesson in presidential revenge during the last Trump administration. Trump reportedly demanded that the Justice Department sue to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner. (The lawsuit failed, though the merger also quickly unraveled.)
Executives are concerned at the possibility that Trump could take revenge on the company, a high-profile NBC employee told Semafor.
Late last year, the former president explicitly raised the prospect of taking regulatory or investigative action against NBC and Comcast. While he characteristically did not provide specific details about how he would go after the company, antitrust questions aside, the government can slow or stop mergers, or attack parent companies’ other interests, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did when he went after Disney’s local tax and regulatory arrangements.
While all that speculation may seem far-fetched, it’s worth stepping to ask why NBC would take a risky, dramatic step that could alienate much of its audience and staff.
All of the cable networks have taken a post-Trump administration ratings dip. But MSNBC has been able to weather the storm better than CNN, maintaining decent audience ratings in its primetime hours. Still, NBCU leadership seems willing to test the loyalty of its viewers and its hosts and staff by putting Trump on the air and paying McDaniel.
Over the weekend, Jones and her deputies fielded calls and texts from nearly all of the network’s personalities, and reassured them that despite the New York Times article saying that McDaniel would appear on MSNBC to talk about the election, she in fact would not be featured on the channel. Two people familiar with the conversations said that she told senior network staff that there was “no expectation” that McDaniel would appear on the network. NBCU officials have sought to slightly re-interpret Jones’ private comments, telling the Washington Post and Deadline that network executives called anchors to “reassure them that they maintain editorial independence over their shows and are free to book — or not book — whatever guest pundits they please.”
NBC and MSNBC are not alone in their struggles with how to cover Trump’s ascent back to the top of the Republican party post-Jan. 6 — a choice that may be partly about mollifying Trump, and partly about re-evaluating whether blacking him out has actually made their audiences better informed. CNN has begun taking Trump live on television again, while new Twitter owner Elon Musk welcomed back the former president to the since-renamed platform X.
Earlier this year, Semafor first published the story reporting that ABC News president Kimberly Godwin emailed staff privately, saying that Trump’s recent comments about Black people were “as racist as they come.” But when Semafor reached out to the network about Godwin’s remarks, a spokesperson walked them back, saying they were “part of a larger editorial conversation” about how to cover Trump. When the network discussed Trump’s comments on- air, it was more cautious, saying the remarks were “widely criticized as racist.”
Only Fox News, in fact, is keeping Trump at arm’s length. Since forking over $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems as part of a defamation settlement, the network will only air pre-taped interviews with Trump.
