Maddow Scorches NBC Bosses Over Accusations Execs Shielded Weinstein, Lauer: ‘Very, Very Hard to Stomach’

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow laid out in excruciating detail the alleged misconduct of NBC News executives, who have been accused of killing an explosive exposé on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults and of repeatedly shielding former Today Show host Matt Lauer from similar claims: “Those accusations are very, very hard to stomach.”

In a long and devastating monologue, Maddow recounted the reporting history of guest Ronan Farrow. She explained how Farrow’s bombshell reporting on Weinstein and the #MeToo movement, which ultimately earned him a Pulitzer Prize, was started at NBC News but was continually hamstrung and eventually blocked from air, because of objections raised by network executives like NBC News President Noah Oppenheim.

“Now, NBC News is obviously our parent company here at MSNBC,” Maddow noted, before offering a very raw and personal response to the controversy. “The allegations about the behavior of Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer are gut-wrenching, at baseline, no matter who you are or what your connection is to this story. But accusations that people in positions of authority in this building may have been complicit in some way in shielding those guys from accountability? Those accusations are very, very hard to stomach.”

Maddow went on to note a potential pattern of network interference in seminal stories about alleged sexual harassment involving powerful men, including the infamous “grab ’em by the pussy” tape of President Donald Trump.

“I can tell you

that inside this building, this issue, the Weinstein story, having to leave the building in order to get told and combine that with another previous gigantic story on a related subject, the Access Hollywood tape with Billy Bush, leaving this building to get told,” Maddow explained. “The amount of consternation here would be almost impossible to overstate. I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in this company since I’ve been here. It would be impossible to overstate the consternation in this building around this issue.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.