When will they ever learn that leading isn’t what it used to be? That leading in 2024 is not like it was in 2014 not to speak of 2004 or a decade or more before. In 2024 leaders in America risk being upended if their followers are strongly, not to speak of virulently opposed. This applies to all leaders – especially to those with followers who themselves are prominent and powerful.
Six days ago, NBC News announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel as an on-air contributor. McDaniel had recently stepped down from her post as chair of the Republican National Committee. She was to provide the network, including its left leaning cable outlet, MSNBC, with commentary that would be reliably conservative.
McDaniel did not, though, come to the network as a conventional political operator. Because to survive in the Time of Trump she had to be his lacky, his toady, her appointment to the ranks at NBC could have been predicted to raise eyebrows – and trigger anger.
Which it did – and then some. People, enough people, at NBC/MSNBC were outraged that now among their colleagues was a woman who had associated herself with the most outrageous, and dangerous of former President Trump’s numberless lies – that the 2020 election was rigged. That it was Donald Trump who ought rightly to be sitting in the Oval Office not Joe Biden.
Within 48 hours of the announcement that McDaniel had been hired by their superiors, subordinates at the network lashed out. NBC’s leaders were taken to task by their followers – in public. These though were not ordinary followers. They were network stars with high visibility, and with voices certain to be heard loud and clear.
The revolt started with longtime NBC anchor Chuck Todd. 48 hours after McDaniel was hired Todd went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” bitterly to charge that she was completely untrustworthy. A day later Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski opened their popular show, “Morning Joe,” with a similar verbal fuselage. They referred to McDaniel as “an anti-democracy election denier” and made clear their strong objection to NBC’s decision to hire her. Similarly, another network anchor, this one a former Republican operative herself, Nicolle Wallace. She accused her bosses of having signaled to election deniers that they could now go about spreading falsehoods “as one of us, as badge-carrying employees of NBC News, as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.”
No one spoke out more forcefully and at greater length than MSNBC superstar Rachel Maddow. She used nearly all of the first half of her hour-long Monday night prime time show to talk about what happened. “The fact that Ms. McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News to me is inexplicable,” Maddow said. She went on to charge that her bosses had put on the payroll “someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government. Someone who is still trying to convince Americans that this election stuff doesn’t really work. That this last election wasn’t a real result. That American elections are fraudulent.”
In less than a week, it became clear that NBC’s leaders’ fate was sealed. That they had no choice but to surrender to their followers, most prominently those within the network but, as messaging on social media made clear, also those without. Said Cesar Conde, Chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, “After listening to the concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor.” He added, “I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down.”
What brought about this debacle is as plain as the nose on Mr. Conde’s face. He and other members of his management team thought they could do what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it. But those days are dead and gone. In the here and now leaders who ignore their followers, whether wittingly or unwittingly, do so at their peril.