‘Partisan,’ ‘Unsparing,’ ‘Very Dark’; NBC’s Lamest Bellyaching from the Inauguration

Curtis Houck
January 21st, 2025 12:22 AM

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Both before and after their brutal rhetorical beatdowns at the hands of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), NBC’s inauguration coverage paddled the struggle boat as, over the course of six-plus hours of post-ceremonies coverage, they voiced their own set of grievances over President Trump’s “searing,” “single most partisan,” “very dark” speech that’s put him at “risk” of “overstepping what he claims is already a mandate” with a series of executive orders that one was even compared to Japanese internment camps.

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, Today co-host Savannah Guthrie, and Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker went first after Trump’s speech, talking about the “lower key tone” speech as an “searing” and “unsparing critique” of the Biden presidency:

Once the ceremonies full came to a close, they were joined by senior White House correspondent senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson in making the moment all about the Bidens and even commiserating with him:

Hilariously, they tried to go to the walking, talking Notable Quotable in NBC presidential historian Michael Beschloss. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t go as planned:

As the Bidens bid farewell to Washington aboard a Marine One special designation, they brought in Biden adviser, former Newsweek editor, and longtime liberal presidential historian Jon Meacham.

First, he waxed poetic about his friend (click the X post to read the full quote):

He made the pivot to excoriating Trump with a ludicrous claim that he’s “not a Democrat” and “not a Republican” and thus can say the speech “was the single most partisan inaugural I think I know of in American history” and “even the invocations tended to be partisan,” which he took great offense as an Episcopalian (cue the laugh tracks) (click “expand”):

MEACHAM: I will say that was the single most partisan inaugural I think I know of in American history. Even the invocations tended to be partisan. I am a person of faith, as are many of you. I’m an Episcopalian, I am a Christian, I am an observant Christian, but I will say this, when religion is used to divide and to exalt one side over the other, we are in a place that — where we need to take care. We should be praying together for our nation. We should be praying together for our fellow countryman. We should not be praying for certain Electoral College outcomes or certain policy shifts and certain personalities to prevail.

HOLT: Jon, when you —

MEACHAM: And so, I think — yep?

HOLT: — yeah, when you say all that and characterize it as a highly partisan speech, do you see anything in Donald Trump that signals that this time will be different, that, you know, lessons learned and I mean, when we all — experience this teaches us all lessons, do you see that here?

MEACHAM: I hope. I live in hope like all of us. I don’t — I think it was a speech of Trumpian superlatives. And look, 49.9% of the country that decided to vote chose this path, and I’m not being sentimental or mockish when I say I genuinely pray for his success because that is the country’s success, which is a phrase of George Herbert Walker Bush’s when he handed power to Bill Clinton. In many ways, President Trump is the fullest manifestation of forces that can do great good, but they can also divide us, and so, we are now in a position as a country — and this is not a partisan observation — we’re in a position in the country where, Lester, as your question implies, in many ways the course of the country always intimately intertwined with those who are in power, is particularly so in the next four years.

HOLT: Marine One —

MEACHAM: No one has ever — no one has ever had the impact — I mean as President Biden leaves — this is the age of Trump politically. That’s not to lionize him, but as a practical matter, he has defined our politics for more than a decade. He will continue to define our politics. He has defined the supreme Court. He has defined, in many ways, cultural shifts and, as a country, we will be either embracing or pulling back from the personality we saw very much on display today.

To his credit, NBC News NOW anchor Tom Llamas directly responded to the bomb-throwing by describing the mood at Capital One Arena for the post-inauguration rally as having an “atmosphere” that’s “the complete opposite, if you will, to sort of the take that we just heard from Jon Meacham” with “people in here...completely enthralled.”

Senior White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell committed a TV faux pas after Trump’s second address to the overflow room at the Capitol Visitor’s Center:

As we saw earlier on NBC and repeatedly on ABC, there were concerns about cost of mass deportations (click “expand”):

WELKER: I talked to the President about [deportations], how much is it going to cost? He said, there’s no price tag on this, doesn’t matter what the cost is. Well, there actually is a price tag. It’s about $88 billion per year just to remove one million people. I asked Speaker Johnson this weekend, are you willing to pay for that, no matter what the cost? He basically signaled, yes, we’re going to find a way to do this, but saying it and doing it are two very different things, because that could potentially add a lot to the debt.

GUTRHIE: Well, yeah, and plus, to say nothing of Trump tax cuts, which will also be expensive in terms of revenue going down, but of course, the age-old argument is, well, if you juice the economy, then we’ll get more tax revenue, which is a boring policy topic for another day.

Longtime Republican aide Hogan Gidley also took to the table a la McCarthy. Holt also tried tripping him up by lamenting his second speech was “more informal...and it was very reminiscent of the rallies we have heard many times” with “a lot of the same grievances” to the point that there’s a “risk overstepping what he claims is already a mandate.”

Gidley dispatched with this by arguing Trump has already “widen[ed] the tent, because I do believe a lot of the successes he wants to usher in really do affect all Americans, regardless of race, religion, color, creed, but look, he ran on those issues.”

Holt later brought up Biden’s preemptive pardons for five of his family members (in addition to one already given to son Hunter), but suggested they’re above board because of “a legitimate fear” of Trump’s desire for “retribution.”

“[P]ardons typically come for some people who have done something wrong. So, it’s a interesting opportunity for people on the right to point out, wait a minute, see, we told you this guy was corrupt, and he knows it, that’s why he’s got to pardon his family on the front end, but Donald Trump wants to focus on winning for the American people,” Gidley replied.

O’Donnell and Jackson expressed concern about career FBI officials and others in federal law enforcement agencies, so Gidley turned it around by invoking Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and then the lawfare against Trump (click “expand”):

O’DONNELL: Do long-time federal employees who work at the bureau or work at other agencies that are in the law enforcement space, do they have a reason to be nervous about the kind of scrutiny they’re going to get? Are they going to be able to do their jobs as civil servants without a sense that they’re somehow going to be called out in a way?

GIDLEY: I don’t think they’re going to be called out unless they’re doing something improper, unless they’re doing something illegal. You know, we have a whole host of issues we’ve seen crop up during the Trump administration the first time, and I famously think of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who had this big plan to hurt and curtail Donald Trump in some form or fashion and they end up getting paid millions of dollars for their, you know, their work. It was a weird deal. So, I think a lot of that kind of stuff is going to be, you know, at the fore if they can find people working against president Trump in some form or fashion, but I don’t know how that’s going to look.

JACKSON: There is a throughline here when it comes to this idea, if you’re having an umbrella, pardon the analogy, but the umbrella would be this idea of political retribution. This is the concern that critics of Kash Patel have —

O’DONNELL: And loyalty.

JACKSON: — and loyalty and what that means, because one of the things that critics are concerned about is this idea of an enemies list, this idea of political revenge, and while it may be, as you say, questionable whether President Trump will direct his Department of Justice to go after his political enemies, I think there are those of his opponents who would say that he doesn’t have to. Even just by talking about it, even just by some of the conversations and the things he said, it is out there for people like Kash Patel to pursue. As you say, that will be adjudicated in these confirmation hearings, but there is a throughline today when you look at those preemptive pardons that I think we’ve seen Republicans be extremely concerned about this idea that now former President Biden preemptively pardoned members of his family, preemptively pardoned members of the January 6th select committee, others tied to the January 6 attacks. We’re getting some new reaction now from one Democrat, Senator Peter Welch, who said that Joe Biden was in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t position. He said, it’s distressing how the pardon system has gotten out of hand but given the threats made by President Trump, the pardons here are sadly understandable.

GIDLEY: Okay. But let’s understand, Donald Trump was the actual target of Joe Biden, his administration, in so many ways, and so Donald Trump has also been clear that he’s not going to get into this retribution situation at all. He wants to focus on winning for the American people, but he also is a victim, I think, of a weaponized federal government. He talked about it in his speech today, and it was an issue that I think he ran on and that helped him win as well because people don’t like that. It’s so odd — government, as you know, is massive. The federal government has millions of employees across this country. Any coach that comes into a football team gets to hire the assistant coaches and bring in the players they want. It’s like only in the federal government do you get tet there and millions of people are allowed to keep their jobs. I understand there are protections for some of those but the fact of the matter is if you’re doing your job and performing in a way that’s commensurate with, you know, the duties that you’re supposed to actually accomplish, you’re fine. If you’re doing something illegal, if you’re doing something wrong, obviously, that needs to be rooted out, and I think the American people stand by that too.

MSNBC host Jen Psaki popped over for a few minutes shortly after Gidley to complain that Trump gave “quite a political” and “self-indulgent” speech that violated some democratic norm that “politics is suspended” for inaugurations and ignored the need for “a moment of reflection on where the country is.”

Holt would try a third time with the negativity in this question to Senator Katie Britt (R-AL): “You know, as I was listening, I was wondering the message that’s being said about the state of the country. It’s a very dark picture that he painted in the address about this country. Do you see the country as negatively as he does?”

Perhaps the best meltdown from NBC’s coverage went to Yamiche Alcindor, who’s returned to the White House after a four-year respite from holding a White House to account. Her topic? Expressing dismay over the executive orders on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and transgenderism (click the X post to read the full transcript):

Shortly before 5:00 p.m. Eastern, there was this ugly lumping together by senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett (who’s mother is Obama family confidante Valerie Jarrett):

To see the relevant NBC transcript from January 20, click here.

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