Trump says Ronna McDaniel is in ‘Never Never Land’ after being fired by NBC after just four days, while her boyfriend Hugh Hewitt claims she will sue for ‘mental distress’
- NBC announced it was dropping the former RNC chairman as a political contributor
- McDaniel’s hiring sparked outrage among NBC’s on-air talent
Donald Trump is addressing Ronna McDaniel’s extremely short-lived tenure at NBC News, after the former Republican National Committee chair was fired just days after being hired by the network.
The ex-president took to social media with a series of posts about McDaniel, saying she is in a place you don’t want to be.
“It only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear,” he wrote. “It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”
He continued, “These radical left crazies are CRAZY, and the top people at NBC ARE WEAK.”
In another lengthy message, Trump went after Chuck Todd, the former moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, who was among the network employees who denounced criticism of McDaniel being on the payroll.
Trump ended his message with, “If I knew Ronna was going to get MSNBC in trouble, I would have advised her to change her name back to Romney and she would have had a better chance!”
Ronna McDaniel appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday after it was announced that she had been hired by NBC as a political contributor. She was dropped by the network just days after joining the network after hiring irate employees
McDaniel chaired the RNC while Trump was president. Under pressure from Trump, she resigned from her position on March 8
NBC officially dropped McDaniel on Tuesday, just four days after she announced she would be joining the network as a political contributor. The announcement of her hiring on Friday prompted immediate reaction from the network.
Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski said they would not invite her to their MSNBC program. Todd went on-air rant about her appointment, decrying McDaniel’s support for Trump’s false claims of 2020 election fraud.
According to the New York Times, her deal with the network was approximately $300,000 per year.
In a statement Tuesday evening, NBCUniversal chairman Cesar Conde said, “After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be a contributor to NBC News.”
McDaniel was chair of the RNC from 2017 until earlier this month, when she resigned under pressure from Trump, who wanted loyalist Michael Whatley and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to lead the party.
Radio host Hugh Hewitt blasted NBC for dropping McDaniel on Fox News and said she was going to sue for inflicting mental distress.
While NBC staffers were outraged by her appointment, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, a friend of McDaniel’s, said he had never seen anything so “bold” from her ouster.
“Ronna is going to sue everyone who defamed her for breach of contract, for deliberately bending mental distress,” Hewitt said during an appearance on Fox News.
“They are going to file suit for destroying her business opportunities that come from her being on TV,” he added.
“I think they made a terrible decision and allowed MSNBC to take over their network.”
He claimed that the “cult has taken over the news department.”
Todd delivered a stunning rebuke from his own network on Sunday for hiring McDaniel.
He said many journalists were uncomfortable with the network’s appointment of her because their professional dealings with the RNC over the past six years “faced gaslighting and character assassination.”
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow had also complained that McDaniel was hired by her network. She had a specific issue with McDaniel over the way she promoted false claims of election fraud.
After McDaniel was ousted Tuesday, Maddow responded on air, calling it a sign of respect from the leadership that heard the criticism from across the network.
She said she was grateful that NBC leadership did this “bold, strong thing.”