MSNBC anchors Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow reacted happily to the hiring and almost immediate termination of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel on Tuesday as an NBC News annalyst.
NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde sent a memo to staff Tuesday announcing that McDaniel was no longer with the network, after Maddow, Reid and several other network hosts cried foul in on-air rebukes.
"I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down," Conde wrote. "While this was a collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team, I approved it and take full responsibility for it."
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"I know I felt very strongly about it, I know you felt very strongly about it," Reid told Maddow, speaking on McDaniel's hiring at NBC. Reid noted that many other anchors were also up in arms about the hiring of the former RNC chair, whose ties to former President Trump and rhetoric and actions around the 2020 election made her a pariah.
"And I just have to say, when somebody does the right thing, I feel like it should be acknowledged as publicly as we acknowledged our outrage," Reid said. "I know how I feel about it. I’m grateful to Cesar for actually making the right decision. I think it was the right decision."
"I will just say that journalists are a fractious bunch," Maddow said.
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"To see essentially the unanimous feeling among all the journalists in this building and all the senior staff and all the producers and everybody in this building about this was one thing," Maddow continued. "But then to see the executives and the leadership hear that and respond to it and be willing to change course based on it, based on their respect for us and hearing what we argued, I have deep respect for that."
Maddow said acknowledging the mistake of hiring McDaniel was "a show of strength" and a "show of respect for the people who work at this company and who make us who we are."
"That leadership was willing to change on this, and I’m grateful to them," she added.
NBC's announcement last Friday of McDaniel's hiring sparked intense backlash from the network's biggest stars.
Chuck Todd kicked off the avalanche of on-air attacks towards McDaniel following her NBC debut on Sunday's "Meet the Press."
Other MSNBC hosts, including Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Nicolle Wallace, Jen Psaki and Lawrence O'Donnell joined the chorus of upset voices on the air in a coordinated pressure campaign.
Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
