With Donald Trump?
It was Fox News from the Right….
With the 2018 Democratic ‘wave’ election and a huge 2020 Democratic Presidential group and debates coming shortly ?
It’s MSNBC coming from the left….
A question hangs over the hosts of the first Democratic debate of the Trump era: Which version of NBC will show up? Is it the network of Lester Holt or Rachel Maddow?
A teeming field of candidates is heading to Miami next week, with a cast of moderators almost as crowded as the hopefuls onstage.
More than 300 staffers from NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo will join them. NBC has received requests from more than 1,100 journalists to cover the event and granted accreditation to 600 of them.
They arrive at a moment when MSNBC is viewed in many quarters as the network of the Resistance, but it also is home to a robust newsgathering operation and staid newsreaders.
The candidates will jockey to speak and distinguish themselves. But with such a large field — a single candidate will be lucky to get 10 minutes of speaking time — some of the biggest stars of the two-night, four-hour affair will be the moderators.
The lineup NBC has planned has already caused some consternation. The table will include: Lester Holt, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News”; Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of “Today”; Chuck Todd, moderator of “Meet the Press”; Jose Díaz-Balart, anchor of “Noticias Telemundo”; and somewhat controversially, MSNBC opinion host Rachel Maddow.
Maddow’s network has ridden the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to solidify its position ahead of CNN but behind Fox News as the second-ranked cable-news network. But her dominance, which has come to define MSNBC despite a robust slate of investigative reporters and other news anchors, has led the cable network into an existential moment.
“This is a channel that’s just figuring out how to exist as a news organization that is also a potential arbiter of a presidential race,” said one senior NBC staffer.
While the NBC audience of Holt on Nightly News and Guthrie on the “Today” show dwarfs Maddow’s on MSNBC, Maddow has become one of the biggest stars in cable news, rivaling Fox News’s Sean Hannity, her ideological (and time-slot) opponent.
Appearing on Maddow’s show has been a key stop for nearly every Democratic presidential candidate….
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