Ronna McDaniel Will Sue for ‘Mental Distress’ Over NBC Firing, Friend Says

Ronna McDaniel, a former Republican National Committee chairwoman, plans to take legal action after NBC News fired her, according to conservative political commentator Hugh Hewitt.

The network reversed its hiring decision on Tuesday after MSNBC hosts including Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Lawrence O’Donnell and Nicolle Wallace voiced their strong disapproval of the move within days of it being announced.

McDaniel was hired on Friday to provide political analysis on MSNBC and NBC as the November presidential election approaches. She left her position at the RNC earlier this month following a request for new leadership from former President Donald Trump.

During an appearance on Fox News, Hewitt, who called McDaniel a friend, claimed she will sue those who defamed her.

McDaniel had not publicly reacted to her firing at the time of publication. Newsweek emailed NBC, Fox News and McDaniel for comment Wednesday.

“I have never seen anything this brutal since I got started in media in 1990. Ronna is going to sue everyone who defamed her for breach of contract, for intentional infliction of mental distress. They are going to sue for the destruction of her business opportunities that come from being on TV,” Hewitt said while on air.

“I think they made a terrible decision and they allowed the MSNBC bleed to take over their network and the cult has taken over the news division. And it’s going to hurt the 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump [who] are not going to watch NBC News.”

A video posted to X (formerly Twitter) of Hewitt’s comments on Fox News had been viewed 1.2 million times at the time of writing.

People took to the comments to critique Hewitt’s statement, with many saying McDaniel would have difficulty suing.

“I’d say Hugh should stick to being a constitutional law professor, but I’d rather keep him away from the subject matter. The cause of action he’s reaching for is ‘tortious interference.’ And you’d have a hard time showing causation even if all other elements were demonstrated,” law professor Anthony Michael Kreis wrote.

“Yeah, well the first part of defamation is that the person said something about her that wasn’t true,” Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief at Meidas Touch, commented.

Josh Autry, a lawyer, added: “Hugh has obviously never read a single court case about intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

This isn’t the first time that Hewitt has spoken out publicly in defense of McDaniel. In an opinion piece for Fox News, he said McDaniel was the “best hire NBC could make.”

“NBC brass made a bold and very smart choice to bring on McDaniel. It was the first sign I’ve seen in a long time that any legacy network cares about reclaiming the middle more than they do about losing the progressive left audience,” he wrote.

“I don’t think a lot of viewers are going to leave NBC because they see Ronna McDaniel commenting on the news weekly on Meet the Press. But I can guarantee you that traditional TV ‘news’ is deader than dead until a quarter of the analysts at the networks and perhaps one in six anchors are at least as conservative as Ronna McDaniel.”

McDaniel announced her resignation from the RNC in February, following months of pressure from Trump and followers of his MAGA movement. Her hiring by NBC on Friday was met with condemnation from both sides of the political aisle, although criticism from the network’s hosts seemingly resulted in her abrupt dismissal.

Before making her debut on Meet the Press on Sunday, the network faced calls for a boycott over the hiring. Many critics voiced outrage over McDaniel having boosted Trump’s unproven claims of a “stolen” 2020 election, a position that she appeared to reverse during the interview by conceding Joe Biden won “fair and square.”

Criticism from NBC and MSNBC personalities ramped up over the four days that McDaniel was associated with the organization. Top-rated MSNBC host Maddow said on Monday night that she found the hiring “inexplicable” and hoped that NBC bosses would “reverse their decision.”