Russia Today host Ed Schultz claims he was let go from MSNBC in 2015 because he supported Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., during the Democratic presidential primary.
MSNBC was “in the tank for Hillary Clinton,” Schultz said last week in an interview with National Review’s Jamie Weinstein.
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He also said the network’s president, Phil Griffin, was like a “watchdog,” closely monitoring what the hosts covered, including campaign events and speeches. Schultz claimed there was a moment in May 2015 when he planned to air Sanders’ campaign launch in Burlington, Vt. He even prerecorded an interview with the senator ahead of the launch. Griffin wasn’t interested, he said.
Schultz claimed he received a call from the MSNBC head on the day of Sanders’ campaign launch and was told they were not going to cover the event.
“It got rather contentious,” Schultz said, adding he was then forced to cover something “totally meaningless.”
A review of MSNBC’s programming for that evening shows he covered fatal flooding in Texas and Oklahoma and the death of Freddy Gray, an unarmed African-American Baltimore man shot and killed by police, the Washington Free Beacon noted.
When Sanders’ speech went live at around 5:30 p.m., “The Ed Show” covered it. MSNBC only cut away from Schultz at 6:00 p.m., when Al Sharpton’s since-canceled evening program was scheduled to begin. Sharpton went on to cover Sanders’ campaign launch.
“I think the Clintons were connected to [NBC News chief] Andy Lack, connected at the hip,” Schultz told Weinstein. “I think that they didn’t want anybody in their prime time or anywhere in their lineup supporting Bernie Sanders. I think that they were in the tank for Hillary Clinton, and I think that it was managed, and 45 days later, I was out at MSNBC.”
He added, “I thought it stunk.”
“The Ed Show” was canceled in July 2015 along with “The Cycle” and “Now With Alex Wagner.” The shows were canceled as part of a larger plan “to create a new look and flow for [MSNBC’s] dayside programming, [which] will begin the pivot towards live, breaking news coverage — with interim hosts from among our very talented ranks,” Griffin announced in an office-wide memo.
As for his life now hosting a show on a Russian propaganda network, Schultz says he is very “happy.”
“I’m doing real journalism. It’s not opinion,” he said.
He added, “There was more oversight and more direction given to me on content at MSNBC than there ever has been here at RT. I think that it’s very sad that story is not getting out.”
