Geraldo tells Rachel Maddow, MSNBC hosts: God didn't make you 'arbiters of right and wrong'
A longtime TV personality is criticizing prominent MSNBC opinion hosts who pushed for the termination of NBC's contract with former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as an on-air contributor, insisting that “God did not anoint them arbiters of right or wrong.”
Geraldo Rivera, the former Fox News host whose career has spanned several decades, took to X on Monday to weigh in on the news that NBC had terminated its contract with McDaniel just days after they hired her. Rivera, a liberal who frequently clashed with his more conservative colleagues at Fox News, lamented that “Ronna McDaniel is getting washed away by a tsunami of pretentious bull sh--” in a post on X Monday night.
Rivera attributed MSNBC personalities’ demands to fire McDaniel to the fact that “they hate [former President Donald] Trump.” A video compiled by the media watchdog NewsBusters shows examples of what Rivera was talking about, with multiple on-air personalities at NBC's cable news arm MSNBC expressing vehement opposition to its decision to hire McDaniel. MSNBC host Joy Reid cited McDaniel’s hiring as an example of “the normalization of the dangerous, damned lies from the Republican Party.”
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The chyron at the bottom of the screen during Monday’s edition of “Deadline: White House” read “hiring of fmr. GOP chair raises questions about platforming election deniers.”
MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski derided McDaniel as an “anti-democracy election denier” while her husband and co-host on “Morning Joe” Joe Scarborough expressed disappointment that “we weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring,” adding, “If we were, we would have strongly objected to it.”
“We hope NBC will reconsider its decision,” Brzezinski said. Longtime MSNBC host Rachel Maddow also told viewers, “I hope they will reverse their decision.” Maddow also likened the network's hiring of McDaniel to hiring “a mobster to work at a [district attorney’s] office” and joined other MSNBC hosts in vowing that the former RNC chair would never appear on their programs.
Rivera offered an additional analysis of McDaniel’s ouster in a subsequent X post on Tuesday: “What many progressives like Maddow apparently do not understand is that God did not anoint them arbiters of right or wrong. Millions of Americans don’t see the world the way either Maddow or Ronna McDaniel see it.”
“NBC’s audience deserved to hear Ronna McDaniel’s point of view. She is the closest Trump insider ever to go public,” he added. “Maddow and her snobby, self-righteous crowd made sure Ronna would not be heard, at least not on NBC. That’s not only inexplicable, it is indefensible.”
At the same time, Rivera stressed that he shared the MSNBC hosts’ disagreement with McDaniel’s point of view: “75 Million Americans voted for Trump. Half of them still believe he got robbed. I reject the notion of election denial. It is patently false. I refuse to support Trump because of that reckless, bellicose falsehood. That’s my point of view, and I don’t hesitate to share it.”
NBC News reported Tuesday that NBCUniversal Group, the parent company of NBC News and MSNBC, agreed to comply with the requests of its on-air talent. In an email Tuesday, NBCUniversal Group Chairman Cesar Conde told staffers that “after listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor.”
Conde also said he wanted to “personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down.”
He added, “While this was a collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team, I take full responsibility for it.”
Conde, however, also defended his initial hiring of McDaniel as part of the network’s “deep commitment to presenting our audiences with a widely diverse set of viewpoints and experiences, particularly during these consequential times.” He stressed that “we continue to be committed to the principle that we must have diverse viewpoints on our programs, and to that end, we will redouble our efforts to seek voices that represent different parts of the political spectrum.”
McDaniel was first elected to lead the RNC in 2017, shortly after Trump took office. While she remained on good terms with the former president for the most part, she had become a target for criticism among some in the Republican Party in light of the party’s lackluster performance in recent elections.
At one of the Republican presidential primary debates last year, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy criticized her results as RNC chair: “Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020 [and] 2022” and “got trounced” in 2023. He called on the then-RNC Chairwoman to “come on stage tonight” and “look GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
