National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, called into question the sincerity of ongoing protests by NBC staff members over the network’s hiring of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel as a contributor.
“I think this is completely disingenuous,” Cooke said. “This is not because I believe Ronna McDaniel to be someone of great charisma and insight. She’s not. . . . It’s not either because I don’t have a problem with the way the Trump administration often behaved, especially around the 2020 election — I do. . . . The problem I have is that I see absolutely no interest at NBC, or frankly anywhere else, in hiring the sort of people that those who make those cases pretend they want.”
Cooke said that the networks aren’t “trying to find eloquent, charismatic, honest conservatives to present the views that are held by around half the country . . . because they don’t want those views reflected.”
“It’s not that every criticism of Ronna McDaniel is untrue,” Cooke said. “It’s that this is pretextual.”
“So instead,” Cooke argued, “they latch on to sometimes-correct criticisms of individuals or of people within the movement, but they never fill in the second part of the form, which is, ‘Okay, who do you want instead?’”
“And that’s because they don’t want anyone. And it’s obvious, but they think we can’t see it.”
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