Presidential historian Jon Meacham will no longer be a paid contributor on MSNBC after he assisted Joe Biden’s speechwriting team without disclosing it on air.
Meacham helped write the presumptive president-elect’s “victory” speech, delivered in Delaware on Saturday night, and others, the New York Times reported on Monday. He was on MSNBC both before and after Biden’s acceptance speech, and on both occasions, he failed to disclose that he helped shape the speech.
Meacham will be allowed on-air but will no longer be paid, according to a person familiar with the matter. The network declined to comment.
Meacham’s 2018 book, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, has long been a narrative that Biden has run on and that he addressed in his Saturday night address. He spoke of a desire “to rebuild the soul of America, to rebuild the backbone of this nation, the middle class and to make America respected around the world again.”
A spokesman for the Biden campaign, TJ Ducklo, downplayed Meacham’s role in writing the speech.
“President-elect Joe Biden wrote the speech he delivered to the American people on Saturday night, which laid out his vision for uniting and healing the nation,” he said. “Given the significance of the speech, he consulted a number of important and diverse voices as part of his writing process, as he often does.”
Meacham endorsed Biden and spoke during the Democratic National Convention.
Many media outlets have projected Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, but President Trump has refused to concede as he and his allies turn to legal challenges and recounts in key battleground states.
