CNN host Fareed Zakaria publicly criticized NBC News for firing Ronna McDaniel from her analyst contract.
Zakaria argued on Bill Maher’s show that NBC applied a double standard by hosting Stacey Abrams, who also questioned her election loss, while firing McDaniel for similar statements against Biden’s win.
He said liberals risk undermining their own principles of free speech and integrity by using inconsistent standards based on politics.
“Liberals often trigger backlash when they use illiberal means to get to their ends,” Zakaria said. “The way you’re going to defend [liberalism], the way you’re going to move it forward is by not cheating, not cutting corners, not having double standards, because if we have them, then what Trump says is, well, ‘you cut corners, I cut corners.’”
Zakaria pointed out that a large segment of Americans believe the 2020 election was rigged, questioning the fairness of excluding those voices.
While NBC anchors opposed having McDaniel on due to her support of Trump’s election fraud claims, Zakaria argued media organizations should apply consistent principles rather than political bias in their hiring decisions.
