The Republican National Committee is reportedly considering a plan to limit NBC’s access to its convention this summer in response to the network’s Ronna McDaniel fiasco.
McDaniel was fired Tuesday by the Comcast-owned network after outcry from its left-leaning stable of NBC and MSNBC stars over hiring someone who has been closely tied to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“We are taking a hard look at what this means for NBC’s participation at the convention,” Danielle Alvarez, an RNC spokesperson who also represents the election campaign of Republican nominee Donald Trump, told the online news site Politico on Thursday.
It is unclear what Alvarez meant by “hard look.”
The Post has sought comment from the RNC.
This isn’t the first time that the RNC has tussled with NBC News over its perceived bias.
In 2016, the RNC followed through on its threat to cut ties with NBC — denying the Peacock Network an opportunity to host a debate among primary contenders.
The head of the RNC at the time, Reince Priebus, was upset over a previous debate moderated by hosts from NBC’s sister network CNBC who were accused of asking questions that were “inaccurate or downright offensive.”
The Politico story notes that the RNC may not have final authority over who gets access to the convention hall.
The credentialing process for media access to the convention is run by the House Periodical Press Gallery, the congressional agency which grants news outlets access to Capitol Hill.
“[If] the publication is credentialed on Capitol Hill, and one of the parties asked that the publication not be credentialed for the convention, we would credential the publication anyway,” Rob Zatkowski, the director of the agency, told Politico.
“To my knowledge this has never happened before.”
The McDaniel fiasco has thrown NBC into chaos, with one head honcho telling The Post that “a head needs to roll.”
“Someone needs to pay for the clear lack of leadership on this issue,” a senior media figure who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity said.
McDaniel’s tenure at NBC News as a paid contributor lasted just four days before network executives bowed to pressure from some of its headline names such as Rachel Maddow, “Morning Joe” Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Jen Psaki, Nicolle Wallace and Chuck Todd.
McDaniel was apparently too controversial a figure for the top talent at 30 Rock — mainly due to her ties to Trump as well as her alleged role in helping the former president’s attempts to stay in power after his 2020 election defeat at the hands of Joe Biden.
In a recent interview with Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” McDaniel sought to distance herself from Trump’s claim of election fraud, saying that Biden was the “legitimate president” and that he won “fair and square.”
Federal prosecutors who have indicted Trump over an alleged scheme to install a phony slate of electors have cleared McDaniel of any wrongdoing, saying that she was misled by the former president and his ally, attorney John Eastman.
But that wasn’t enough to appease Maddow, Scarborough, Brzezinski and others at NBC News and its sister operation MSNBC — many of whom pledged to keep McDaniel off of their airwaves.
The fallout from McDaniel’s firing could wind up costing NBC. McDaniel, who was among scores of RNC staffers laid off in a recent purge by the Trump campaign, has reportedly hired an attorney to seek legal options in the wake of her dismissal.
Freedman has represented a number of high-profile ousted cable news anchors, including Megyn Kelly, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, Tucker Carlson and Sage Steele.
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