DEROY MURDOCK: Plucked Peacock: Crybaby journos gave NBC brass the bird.

The only thing missing at MSNBC was a mob of black-clad bookers breaking cameras and setting makeup rooms ablaze.

As a news organization, MSNBC botched a perfect opportunity. Several times each week, in an election year, its hosts could have put cameras in McDaniel’s face and asked her tough questions on live TV:

• “Trump faces almost 90 criminal charges. Wouldn’t just one conviction disqualify him among millions of voters?”
• “Trump’s black support stood at 23% in a March 3 CBS News/YouGov poll. That nearly doubles his 12% in 2020. Why won’t he campaign in black neighborhoods?”
• “How will Trump narrow Biden’s widening fundraising advantage?”

Why focus solely on Trump? MSNBC could have grilled McDaniel like a salmon across GOP-related topics:

• “Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R – Georgia) wants House Speaker Mike Johnson (R – Louisiana) to stand down. Do you agree?”
• “Why did Republicans reverse their 13-year-long ban on earmarks and recently approve a 1,102-page, $1.2 trillion spending bill stuffed with some 1,400 pork-barrel projects?”
• “The House Republicans’ five-vote majority will dwindle to just one, thanks to their expelling New York’s George Santos before his corruption trial even began. Also, California’s Kevin McCarthy, Colorado’s Ken Buck, Ohio’s Bill Johnson, and (soon) Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher fled the ballfield and drove home in the sixth inning. Do Republicans relish defeat or has their gender-affirming care backfired?”

MSNBC staffers could have interrogated McDaniel, and she would have had to take it. Unlike her old job, she could not say, “No comment” and then hide in her office (which was not her style). McDaniel could have fulfilled her contract and faced on-air questions or clammed up and surrendered her reported $300,000 annual salary.

Turn the tables: Imagine that Fox News Channel hired Biden’s former Climate Czar John Kerry. Rather than implode on camera, my Fox News colleagues eagerly would ask Kerry such questions as:

Gentlemen, you can’t commit journalism here – this is a news channel!

Or as Andrew Styles rhetorically asked last week: What in the Actual F— Is Wrong With These People? (NBC News Edition.) “This is the network that could have broken the story of Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual misconduct in 2017. Alas, reporter Ronan Farrow said NBC stonewalled his investigation after Weinstein leveraged his Democratic political connections and threatened to expose Today anchor Matt Lauer’s own history of sexual misconduct. Farrow gave up on NBC, published his story in the New Yorker, and won the Pulitzer Prize.”

Evergreen: