CNN’s Chris Wallace Roasts NBC Execs’ ‘Pretty Dumb’ Decision to Hire Ronna McDaniel

COATES: “Speaking of somebody who had been towing a huge plank of the party and the party line as it relates to the RNC was one Ronna McDaniel, right? She was somebody who was the former, now, chairperson of the RNC. She was ousted. Obviously, we know all the reasons, circumstances around that. She was now ousted though from NBC News. And one of the things that contributed to her firing was that she discussed, well, this answer from your July interview with her, and then had an about face. Listen to this”

[Clip starts]
Wallace: “You‘re saying, as the chair of the Republican Party, that you still have questions as to whether or not Joe Biden was duly elected president?”
McDANIEL: “Joe Biden‘s the president.”
Wallace: “No, I didn‘t ask you if he’s the president.”
McDANIEL: “No, I think there were lots of problems — “
Wallace: “Do you think he won the election?”
McDANIEL: “I think there were lots of problems with 2020. Ultimately, he won the election — “
Wallace: “Pardon?”
McDANIEL: “But ultimately, he won the election, but there were lots of problems with the 2020 election. One hundred percent.”
Wallace: “And that‘s fair.”
McDANIEL: “But I don‘t think he won it fair. I don‘t. I‘m not going to say that.”
[Clip ends]

COATES: “Now, she is saying that that answer that she gave you is not different from what she is saying now.What do you make of of what happened here?”
Wallace: “In terms of NBC? You know, I think it was just a terrible mistake. I understand the idea that you want to find somebody to reflect Trump‘s policies, Trumpism, if you will, because he‘s one of the two candidates, it certainly seems, that‘s going to be running for the presidency, one of the two main candidates, there are gonna be some third party candidates, and you want to be able to reflect where he stands on foreign policy, where he stands about Ukraine, all of these other things. That‘s fair. But to hire somebody for supposedly $300,000 a year, who‘s going to be not only an election denier, which she was after the 2020 election, but somebody who worked and was calling people in Michigan, you know, trying to get them not to certify the vote, so she was an in an election-denying enabler, to me that‘s a bridge too far. If you believe in something as fundamental as the peaceful transfer of power, and that we believe in elections and the winner wins and the loser concedes and goes home, to hire somebody to talk about Trumpism and supposedly give an insight into that, but someone who actually was an enabler of Trump‘s effort to overturn the election, I can certainly understand why our colleagues at NBC found that unacceptable. And frankly, I thought it was pretty dumb of the executives at NBC to think they were going to get away with it.”