The internal furor over NBC News’ decision to hire former Republican National Committee head Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor spread Monday, with MSNBC personalities Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace, Lawrence O’Donnell and Joe Scarborough all using their shows to publicly object. Maddow, MSNBC’s most popular personality, compared it to putting a mobster to work in a district attorney’s office.
MSNBC’s coverage topped out during the 9 p.m. ET hour on Monday, in which The Rachel Maddow Show featured live reports from Georgia as well as a pre-scheduled sitdown interview with Hillary Clinton. Maddow’s show averaged 3.9 million viewers, a big spike from the 2.45 million average viewers Maddow received last month.
Elon Musk is courting other television news anchors to pivot to Twitter just like Tucker Carlson after his firing from Fox News. The Twitter owner shared on the digital platform that he would like to balance out the personalities delivering the news on the social network with left-leaning hosts. “It’d be great to have [Rachel Maddow], Don Lemon & others on the left put their shows on this platform. No exclusivity or legal docs required!” he tweeted.