Rachel Maddow Fumes at CBS Brass Over Scott Pelley Firing — Accuses Them of ‘Hungarian, Oligarchic-Style Takeover’ at Trump’s Behest

MS NOW anchor Rachel Maddow slammed CBS’s management on Tuesday night after the firing of longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, accusing them of a “Hungarian, oligarchic-style takeover” at President Donald Trump’s urging.

The remarks came as Maddow hosted special coverage of the Tuesday elections.

After Maddow began the show with a remark that newly minted 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton was “installed there as part of the sort of bald-faced, Hungarian-style oligarchic takeover of that news organization,” she later returned to the topic of Pelley’s firing.

“I made a crack there talking about the Scott Pelley news as being sort of Hungarian, oligarchic-style takeover of the media,” Maddow said. “And I mean, that sort of as a joke, but also sort of deadly serious.”

She went on, : “There’s nobody who is more acutely attuned to the value of a free press than those who are trying to take it away. And when the president baldly says, ‘I am going to use the power of the state in order to get the media that I want,’ and he lines up oligarchic friends in order to do that for him.”

Maddow also expressed hope for Pelley’s future, saying she welcomes the move to make him a colleague at MS NOW.

“I hope he lands right here,” she said. “Yeah, I hope he stays on. I hope he’s on TV tomorrow.”

Read a portion of the segment below:

RACHEL MADDOW: Yeah. I will also just say on on the on the free press part of this, I made a crack there talking about the Scott Pelley news as being sort of Hungarian, oligarchic-style takeover of the media. And I mean, that sort of as a joke, but also sort of deadly serious. I mean, the there’s nobody who is more acutely attuned to the value of a free press than those who are trying to take it away. And when the president baldly says, “I am going to use the power of the state in order to get the media that I want,” and he lines up oligarchic friends in order to do that for him. It’s just, it’s again, there’s no pretense. There’s no saying this is for any other reason. There’s nothing else going on at CBS news other than what we can see is happening at CBS news. And I don’t know where Scott Pelley will land, frankly, I hope he lands right here. Yeah, I hope he stays on. I hope he’s on TV tomorrow. And I hope that everybody in journalism and everybody who values a free press figures out ways to outmaneuver the people who are trying to take the free press from us. But it is it is a fully joined fight at this point. And there’s no I just don’t think there’s any, any I think any pretense that anything else was happening here is over. Yeah.

ALICIA MENENDEZ: I take Cecilia Vega, who recently departed 60 Minutes, at her word, when she says that her experience in that newsroom was one of censorship. I take her at her word when she says that in her stories they were trying to inject political bias. So I am with you 100% on the fact that there is nothing to litigate here. It is very clear what they are doing. The mandate for Bari Weiss is not excellent journalism or editorial discretion. Or to turn this into a new product. No, it’s to grease the wheels for her corporate overlords and let’s be honest, stars across the board when it comes to that objective.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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