NBC’s Savannah Guthrie told Late Show host Stephen Colbert that the atmosphere during former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel’s short time at the network was “unpleasant.”
While promoting her new book, Mostly What God Does, TODAY co-anchor Guthrie visited The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday to discuss her career in news, including what was going on at NBC during the explosive handful of days in between the hiring and firing of McDaniel following an on-air protest by several NBC hosts. (Almost two years ago to the day, Colbert issued his own on-air rebuke over his network CBS hiring Mick Mulvaney, who served as one of former President Donald Trump’s chiefs-of-staff, calling him a “craven toady to a tyrant.”)
Always one to keep things light, Colbert asked Guthrie: “Why did you, Savannah Guthrie, personally make that decision to hire her?”
Colbert: And I want you to answer for your crimes. Why did you think that was the best idea?
Guthrie: I’m glad you’ve given me this platform. Let me see if I can make this as boring as possible, this answer. You know I do still work there. You know that, right?
Colbert: Sure. Yeah. I do, I do.
Guthrie: Do you have any openings around here?
Colbert: Yeah, yeah!
Guthrie: No, I mean, look, it was an unpleasant few days at our network, no question about it.
Colbert: Did you know this was going to happen?
Guthrie: Absolutely not!
Colbert: So, there was no, like, companywide email saying, “Oh, heads up tomorrow we’re gonna announce this”?
Guthrie: No, no, no, no. I was not in the know. I knew nothing about it. And look, the bosses made a decision. They reversed that decision. They acknowledged a mistake, and we moved on. And the only thing I’ll say about it is, number one, I didn’t have anything to do with it. But look, I think the instinct to try to have a diversity of opinions and a diversity of perspectives and voices as we cover an election is the right instinct. And it’s complex, and it’s made more complex by the politics that we have right now.
But, you know, I went to law school. In law school, we learned that if you didn’t engage the counterargument, if you didn’t know what all sides were saying, your own position was quite weak. So I feel that, particularly in mainstream media, we need to include an array of voices. But there’s a line, and the line is truth, the line is facts, and the line is you have to be someone upholding our democracy. And that’s, to me, where the line is.
Watch the full video via The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on YouTube.
