Comcast, which owns NBC News, triggered an internal revolt when they moved to take "Morning Joe" off the air after former President Donald Trump faced an assassination attempt on Saturday — and they're now scrambling to contain the mess, CNN's Reliable Sources reported.
This comes, wrote Oliver Darcy, as Joe Scarborough, after returning to the air, "offered viewers a peek behind the curtain into the conspicuous decision-making process that transpired over the weekend. Scarborough said that the 'Morning Joe' team had been informed Sunday evening that all of MSNBC’s opinion-oriented dayside lineup would be pre-empted for a single NBC News feed covering the attempt on Trump's life" — and yet this turned out to be a lie, with all other opinion programming continuing.
The on-air rebuke is a humiliation for the higher-ups, in particular NBCUniversal chairman Cesar Conde and Comcast chairman Brian Roberts, who now have the controversy out in public to deal with — and it's only the latest case of growing discontent with his leadership, and the pressure he's under from Trump himself.
This comes as "Trump's allies leveled attacks against MSNBC, accusing the network in bad faith of radicalizing Trump's critics and, thus, creating an environment that led to the shooting," noted the report — although there is no motive yet known for the shooter, and he appears if anything to be affiliated with Republicans.
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"Suffice to say, Roberts and the Comcast team ... probably do not wish to find themselves on Trump's enemies list," because if he wins the election, Comcast, which will have to have the Justice Department approve any merger and acquisition deals under antitrust law, notes Darcy.
When Trump was last in the White House, he made a habit of using antitrust lawsuits to punish companies he was angry at for various reasons. For example, he sued to block the AT&T/Time Warner merger because Time Warned owned CNN, whose coverage of the administration enraged him. While many of his most political antitrust actions were blocked by judges, it still carried enormous legal costs for the affected companies.
The Morning Joe controversy will likely be smoothed over soon. But as long as this tension remains, wrote Darcy, and in the absence of trust between staff and leadership, "it's hard to imagine that such eruptions from talent will miraculously come to a halt. If anything, the staff at 30 Rock might feel more empowered to speak out against network brass after the events of the last few months. And that can't bode well for Conde, who must be standing on thinning ice as it becomes more evident he is struggling to manage the increasingly vocal personalities who, at least on paper, report to him."
