Ronna McDaniel appeared on Sunday's "Meet the Press," but not as an NBC News political analyst as was assumed after a Friday announcement that she'd joined the network. Instead, her appearance was as an interviewee, in a pre-scheduled interview with host Kristin Welker.
Welker asked McDaniel about a bunch of hot-button topics but first asked about her record at the RNC, highlighting that one RNC committee member called McDaniel a "failed chair" and asking if McDaniel deserved to still be in her role after the shellacking the party repeatedly suffered at the ballot box during her tenure. Of course, McDaniel believes she did a great job, and any shortcomings were because of the candidates running, or Donald Trump and his supporters. Anyone but Ronna.
You know, I push back on that very hard. You know, the fact that under my time as chair we've had more women in Congress ever than in the history of our party, that we've had more minority growth in our party. And that didn't just happen. I had offices open in Black, Asian, Hispanic communities that we had ignored as a party, and we've seen growth as a result, which by the way, we're seeing in this election as well. And then I'm going to point out to this: The RNC, we don't do the messaging. We don't pick the candidates. We're turnout. So if you look at 2022, just 2022, we turned out four million more Republicans, and we would've won the Electoral College based on that turnout. So when I – what I say to people is, "If we're building the road that all the candidates drive on and if one candidate got to the finish line, the road wasn't the problem. It's candidate to candidate." And I can go to every race in 2022. So I view my tenure as RNC chair as a success.
Unfortunately for McDaniel, 2022 wasn't a presidential election year, and she had been in the job since 2017. Did she need a five-year runway to be able to do her job? Having offices open in Black, Asian, and Hispanic communities doesn't actually do squat. Offices don't vote; people do. The growth the Republican party has seen in the Black and Hispanic communities is due to Donald Trump; it's not due to anything Ronna McDaniel did.
Also, if the RNC doesn't do the messaging, why was she paying people millions of dollars for consulting on messaging and poliitcal strategy? Obviously messaging is part of the strategy to get voters to turn out, but McDaniel makes it sound like she simply ran a nationwide canvassing operation, with no accountability or decision-making ability. When there were some wins during her tenure, however, that sure wasn't the tune she was humming.
Welker then asked McDaniel if she agreed with Trump's announcement that one of his first acts if re-elected president would be "to free those charged and convicted of crimes related to January 6th."
McDaniel indicates she does not agree with Trump that the J6 criminals should be pardoned, but adds that she'll still vote for him pic.twitter.com/fidVW4gCtr
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 24, 2024
McDaniel's answer:
I want to be very clear: The violence that happened on January 6th is unacceptable. It doesn't represent our country. It certainly does not represent my party. We should not be attacking the Capitol. We should not be having violence. I said it that day. I put a statement out that day that this is not acceptable. If you attacked our Capitol and you have been – have – and you’ve been convicted, then that should stay.
Welker interrupted and asked why McDaniel's saying all of this now, instead of back in 2021. McDaniel's answer is more than disingenuous, and is probably the reason Chuck Todd freaked out later in the show.
When you're the RNC chair you – you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right? This is what I believe. I don't think violence should be in our political discourse, Republican or Democrat. And I disagree with that. I agree with him on a whole host of other things. Let's close the border. Let's make sure we have good incomes for people. Let's make sure we do a lot of great things. But on that point, I don't think we should be freeing people who violently attacked Capitol Hill police officers and – and attacked the Capitol.
None of us think violence should be in our political discourse. We also don't think that people protesting should be shot dead the way Ashli Babbitt was. We don't think people should be held for years in jail without due process or a speedy trial. McDaniel had a perfect opportunity to bring the issues with the weaponization of the Department of Justice, but, like she said, now she gets to be a little bit more herself.
In case it wasn't clear, McDaniel fully buys into the Liz Cheney and Kevin McCarthy school of thought regarding January 6.
You know, I don't think he wanted that attack to happen on the Capitol, but I will say that that attack is a dark day in our history. There's nothing to be proud of about that day. There's nothing that we can look back and say, "This was good." It's changed our – our whole country. And so I condemn what happened on January 6th. Do I think he wanted that to happen or pushed that to happen? I don't.
Yes, it changed our whole country. A lot of people realized just how far elements in our own government will go to entrap people, and we've seen an extremely clear weaponization of the Department of Justice against political opponents. McDaniel was in a better position than most to see exactly what was happening and to see the way the FBI and its useful idiots engaged in entrapment, so for her to completely ignore the miscarriages of justice that are still occurring to this day is more than a slap in the face, more than a middle finger to Republicans. To fully know what the left is capable of - McDaniel had to sit for an interview with the J6 Committee, as did many of her employees - and still say all of this is inexcusable.
Actually, inexcusable isn't a strong enough word. As I sit here on this Palm Sunday I think of my friend Siaka Massaquoi, whose wife just gave birth to their first child. Siaka, who's the first vice chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party and a RedState columnist, was arrested earlier this year for misdemeanors related to January 6 when he stood just inside the threshold of the Capitol building for less than a minute before leaving at the request of Capitol Police officers. As he was leaving, he told others to leave, and it was long after members of Congress had left the building. By my reading of the publicly-available court documents in Siaka's criminal case - and this is just my semi-informed opinion - the person who invited Siaka to a Telegram chat of Los Angeles-based Trump supporters who were going to attend the Stop the Steal rally was someone working with the FBI to set people up. Whether Siaka will eventually spend time in jail over this is yet to be seen. Today, I'm just grateful that Siaka wasn't in jail when his child was born. But what Siaka and thousands of other Americans have been dealing with since January 6 doesn't concern Ronna McDaniel in the slightest, and she condemns them all - and not the corrupt government officials still waging war on ordinary citizens. She's a traitor to conservatism, and a two-faced sellout. It's actually fitting that the evidence of her betrayal - done for a few pieces of silver - is on full display at the beginning of Holy Week.
Anyway, we all know that McDaniel had to answer that way or she'd completely be out of her contract with NBC News. MSNBC's few dozen regular viewers were pretty peeved when the announcement was made on Friday, and as of Sunday morning it wasn't clear whether the contract was going to continue. The tension at the studio must have been intense.
The full interview is below.
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