MSNBC Insiders Accuse Cesar Conde of ‘Coddling Trump’ by Pulling Hosts off the Air

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The move by the NBC News Group leadership was the second time a decision tied to Trump has upset talent

MSNBC’s top talent was sidelined in coverage immediately following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. (Photo by Trump Campaign Office / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images/Chris Smith/TheWrap)

Tension skyrocketed at MSNBC this week as network news insiders accused NBCU News Group Chairman Cesar Conde and network president Rashida Jones of “currying favor with the Trump camp” by pulling anchors off the air after the Donald Trump assassination attempt.

Three people inside MSNBC who spoke to TheWrap said they believed the network was aiming preemptively to win points and prevent tension with a potential Trump administration if the former president were to win back the office in November.

The benching decision was a “clearly deliberate coddling of Trump and his allies,” an attempt at “currying favor with the Trump camp,” one individual at the news network told TheWrap who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. “There’s a level of disgust in the company I haven’t seen before,” the individual added.

Two other top insiders agreed with this assessment.

A network spokesman confirmed to TheWrap that “programming decisions were made entirely by the News Group,” led by Conde and Jones. The executives made the call to replace all programming across NBC news platforms — NBC News, MSNBC, Telemundo and NBC News Now — with a single breaking news feed after the assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday.

A network insider strongly disputed that politics had anything to do with what they called a “straightforward news decision.”

The switch, which lasted from Saturday night through Monday afternoon, even preempted “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who have been accused by conservatives of being in the pocket of the Biden White House. Biden has stated that he watches “Morning Joe” and he called in recently to talk about his poor debate performance.

The three individuals told TheWrap that the MSNBC hosts, who are Democratic-leaning and vocal in their opinions, were sidelined in favor of NBC News breaking coverage to prevent them from making controversial statements on air in the heat of the moment. And to prevent singling out “Morning Joe,” MSNBC took all talent off the air, the individuals said.

Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group (Getty Images)

If the network brass made the call for purely news reasons, they certainly did not convince their talent.

“Next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs,” co-host Joe Scarborough said on-air during the program’s first day back on Tuesday. “And the news feed will be us or they can get somebody else to host this show.”

The abrupt decision to sideline talent was the second time in four months that Conde, who has only been in the job since 2020, has made a decision that favored conservatives and angered his on-air talent. In March, Conde faced an avalanche of criticism — including from journalists and anchors on his own network — for hiring former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid network commentator.

The network, facing a revolt over McDaniel’s damaged credibility as someone who participated in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, was forced to rescind the decision. At the time, some inside the network saw leadership’s willingness to reverse course on the decision as a promising result, with Conde taking full responsibility for the “misstep,” as one individual described.

Still, the previous conflict made the decision to sideline talent more noteworthy. “There is a deep and abiding sense of disappointment in news leadership, in a workplace that isn’t healed yet from the Ronna McDaniel fiasco,” one individual said. “That was just bad decision-making. This feels like censorship.”

A further erosion of trust

Scarborough said he was “very disappointed” in the decision to bypass the cable network’s regular lineup, a sentiment shared by many other staffers inside the cable network, according to one individual with knowledge of the situation. The individual said the move has “without question” further eroded trust with leadership, which was already thin given multiple public squabbles over the last year.

As for viewers, the move to straight news also “seemed jarring to MSNBC fans, who tune in primarily for the punditry,” Michael Socolow, professor of journalism and communications at the University of Maine, told TheWrap.

While disturbing to MSNBC anchors, the simulcasting strategy did not come out of the blue. NBCUniversal has been making the case for a united front on all platforms in a developing coverage situation for months, even years now.

There’s clearly a breakdown of confidence from stars and staff with the leadership.”

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at CUNY

“Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening,” an MSNBC spokesperson said in a statement on Monday. “As we continue to cover this story into the week, the networks will continue to cross simulcast, alternating between NBC News, NBC News NOW and ‘MSNBC Reports,’ so there is one news feed covering this developing situation.”

Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at CUNY, pointed out that “there was no breaking news left by Monday morning in relation to the assassination attempt” to report, and that MSNBC viewers “wanted commentary” by that point.

“It was a lack of faith displayed by leadership in their own staff and talent,” Jarvis continued. “There’s clearly a breakdown of confidence from stars and staff with the leadership.”

Socolow, however, viewed the decision as an “implicit admission” of the network’s prioritization of “reporting over speculation and punditry,” which he argues was the correct move in the immediate aftermath, which could have been further inflamed by partisan commentary.

“There’s a hierarchy here, and they are placing reporting at a higher level of service to the public and their audience than their regularly-scheduled pundit shows,” he added.