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20 Word Problems For Year 3: Develop Their Problem Solving Skills Across Single and Mixed KS2 Topics

Emma johnson.

Word problems for Year 3 are an important tool for improving number fluency. The key focus in maths in Year 3 of primary school is on ensuring pupils are becoming more fluent with number facts and the concept of place value. Children are starting to develop more efficient written methods by this stage and are beginning to carry out calculations with increasingly larger whole numbers.

As children progress through school, they are exposed to a wider variety of problem solving questions covering a range of concepts. In Year 3 maths these include the four operations, fractions, measures and statistics.  

It is important that children are regularly exposed to reasoning and problem solving questions, alongside the fluency work each lesson. It is also important to remember that all children need exposure to reasoning and problem solving questions, not just the higher attaining pupils who finish quickest.

We have put together a collection of 20 word problems, aimed at Year 3 pupils.

Years 3 to 6 Rapid Reasoning (Weeks 1-6)

Download this free pack of word problems to improve your class' problem solving skills. Includes questions for Years 3 - 6.

Place value

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In Year 3, pupils focus on one-step problems, covering a range of topics across the National Curriculum. At this stage the majority of word problems pupils are tackling will have one-step, but they may also start to be introduced to simple two-step word problems. Here is a breakdown of topics that will be covered and expectations in Year 3. 

Solve number problems and practical problems involving recognising the place value of each digit of a 3-digit number; comparing and ordering numbers up to 1000 and identifying, representing and estimating numbers using different representations.

Solve problems, including missing number problems, using number facts, place value and more complex addition and subtraction word problems .

Solve problems, including missing number problems, involving multiplication and division, including positive integer scaling problems and correspondence problems

 Solve problems involving counting in tenths; recognising unit and non-unit fractions; recognising equivalent fractions and adding/ subtracting fractions with the same denominator.

Solve problems involving length, volume and mass; adding and subtracting within money word problems ; perimeter and problems involving time.

Solve-step and two-step questions (For example, ‘How many more?’ and ‘How many fewer’?) using information presented in scaled bar charts, pictograms and tables.

By Year 3, children are starting to learn how to use some of the formal written methods of addition and subtraction. It is important that the link between maths in school and maths in real-life continues to be made. Word problems are a key element in helping pupils to make this link. 

When teaching maths problems to Year 3, it’s important to think of ways to make them fun, engaging and something the children are able to relate to. This might include acting out the problem, using concrete resources and providing visual images, to bring the problems to life. 

Benefits of pairs, groups and class discussion 

Children should have plenty of opportunity to talk in pairs, groups and as a whole class, to share their understanding of what is being asked and their strategies for solving the problem. As with Key Stage One, the use of manipulatives is important and all children should have access to a range of maths resources when solving problems like this.

Pupils need to be encouraged to read word problems carefully and to make sure they understand what is being asked, before attempting to tackle the problem. This is where the use of a partner and group discussion can really help children’s understanding. Students then need to think about what they already know and how they can use this to help them answer the question. Where appropriate, pupils should also be encouraged to draw diagrams and pictures to help them solve the question.

Here is an example:

Mason needs 4 apples to make an apple pie.

If he has 28 apples. How many apple pies can he make?

How to solve:

What do you already know?

• We know 4 apples are needed to make an apple pie.
• We are told how many apples Mason has in total, so we must have to divide the total number by 4.
• In year 3, children should be building confidence with multiplication and division facts for the 4 times table, so some will be able to quickly recall these facts to solve the problem.
• Children who aren’t apple to recall quickly could use counters to represent the apples, or draw a bar model to help solve it.

How can this be drawn/represented pictorially?

We can draw a bar model or counters to represent this problem:

• To calculate how pies the 28 apples will make, we can either use or draw 28 counters and put them into groups of 4. We can see that 28 counters will make 7 groups of 4.
• Using the bar model, we can keep adding 4 to the bar until we reach 28. From the bar we can see that 7 x 4 = 28.
• 7 apple pies can be made from the 28 apple pies that Mason has.

In Year 3, pupils are exposed to a range of addition word problems , including problems involving mental addition and addition of up to 3-digits using formal written methods.

See also: Mental maths Year 3

Addition question 1

A family driving on holiday, travel 146 miles from home to the first service station.

They then drive a further 175 miles to reach their destination.

How far have they travelled altogether?

Answer (1 mark): 321 miles

146 + 175 = 321

Addition question 2

Evie is buying a bottle of drink from a vending machine. She has put in 40p. The vending machine shows she still needs to put in £1.25. 

How much is the bottle of drink?

Answer (1 mark): £1.65

125p + 40p = 165p

Addition question 3

Jamie scored 643 on his new online game.

Jared scored 468.

How many points did they score between them?

Answer (1 mark): 1111 points

643 + 468 = 1111

At Third Space Learning we often tie word problems into our one-to-one online tuition. With each programme personalised to the needs of each individual student, children are able to develop their problem solving skills, maths fluency and grow confidence in maths.

Subtraction word problems in Year 3 also need to comprise of a combination of mental calculation questions and those involving formal written subtraction up to 3-digits. Children should also be starting to estimate answers and check their calculations by using the inverse.

Subtraction question 1

Ahmed collects 374 stickers.

He needs 526 stickers to fill his sticker album.

How many more stickers does he need to collect?

Answer (1 mark): 152 stickers

526 – 374 = 152

Subtraction question 2

 A bag of carrots weigh 360g

A bag of tomatoes weighs 235g.

How much heavier is the bag of carrots?

Answer (1 mark): 125g

360 – 235 = 125

Subtraction question 3

 Ahmed buys a bag of sweets for £1.45.

He has a £2 coin. How much change will he get?

Answer (1 mark): 55p

200 – 145 or count up from £1.45 to £2

By the end of Year 3, pupils should be able to recall and use multiplication facts for the 3, 4 and 8 times table. They should also be starting to progress to using the formal written method for solving multiplication word problems involving 2 digits multiplied by a 1-digit number. 

Multiplication question 1

It costs £7 for a cinema ticket

Amber’s mum pays for Amber and her 3 friends. 

How much does she pay for all the tickets?

Answer (1 mark): £28

7 x 4 = 28 

Multiplication question 2

5 mini buses are used to take Year 3 pupils on a school trip.

Each minibus transports 15 children.

How many children go on the school trip?

Answer (1 mark): 75 children

15 x 5 = 75

Multiplication question 3

There are 24 questions on a word problems worksheet. 

A group of 8 children each complete the worksheet.

How many questions will the teacher be marking?

Answer (1 mark): 112 questions

24 x 8 = 112

In Year 3, pupils will need to learn the division facts for the 3, 4 and 8 multiplication tables. At this stage, pupils are required to learn the formal method for division, division word problems will involve mainly mental calculations.

Division question 1

6 children share 18 cookies between them. 

How many cookies does each child get?

 Answer (1 mark): 3 cookies

Division question 2

The school choir needs to travel to the concert hall.

There are 32 children in the choir and parents have been asked to help transport the children.

Each parent is able to take 4 children in their car. How many cars will be needed to get all the children to the concert?

Answer (1 mark): 8 cars

 32 ÷ 4 = 8

Division question 3

 Cakes come in packs of 4.

If Jessica needs 36 cakes for her party, how many packs does she need to buy?

Answer (1 mark): 9 packs

In Year 3 pupils are exposed to a range of fraction word problems , including questions involving counting up and down in tenths; equivalent fractions and adding/subtracting fractions with the same denominator.

Fraction question 1

Jude had 28 sweets.

He gave \frac{1}{4} of his sweets to his little sister.

How many did he have left?

Answer (1 mark): 21 sweets

\frac{1}{4} of 28 = 7

\frac{3}{4} of 28 = 21 or 28 – 7 = 21

Fraction question 2

Khalifa ate \frac{2}{8} of the chocolate bar and Abdulrahman ate \frac{3}{8} of it.

How much chocolate did they have left?

Answer (1 mark): \frac{3}{8}

\frac{2}{8} + \frac{3}{8} = \frac{5}{8} eaten

\frac{8}{8} – \frac{5}{8} = \frac{3}{8}

Fraction question 3

 Molly ate half of a pizza and Rosie ate \frac{3}{6} .

Who ate the most?

Answer (1 mark): They both ate the same amount

\frac{3}{6} is equivalent to \frac{1}{2} .

In Year 3 time word problems may be incorporated into maths problem solving. Students are expected to know time vocabulary, be able to compare time in terms of seconds, minutes and hours and know how many seconds are in a minute and minutes are in an hour. 

Time question 1

The Smith family are driving to the beach.

They leave at 9:05am and arrive at 9:50am.

How long does the journey take them?

Answer (1 mark): 45 minutes

50 – 5 = 45    or     count up from 9:05 to 9:50 = 45 

Time question 2

Holly puts her cake in the oven at 4:22pm and takes it out again at 4:47. 

How long is the cake baking for?

Answer (1 mark): 25 minutes

47 – 22 = 25    or   count up from 4:22 to 4:47

When children first move into lower Key Stage 2, word problems are predominantly one-step. As they become more confident they can be exposed to more word problems, requiring a second step or multi-step word problems .

Multi-step question 1

Oliver had 3 bags of sweets.

Each bag contained 15 sweets.

If he shared the sweets between him and 4 friends, how many sweets would they all 5 of them get?

Answer (2 marks): 9 sweets

3 x 15 = 45 

45  ÷ 5 = 9

Multi-step question 2

A teacher photocopies 95 maths worksheets and 80 English worksheets in one week.

Teachers can print a maximum of 300 worksheets per week. 

How many can the teacher print for other subjects.

Answer (2 marks): 125 worksheets

 95 + 80 = 175

300 – 175 = 125

Multi-step question 3

Three friends go trick or treating. They add all their sweets together and share them out, so they all have an equal number of sweets.

If Ben gets 34 sweets, Sophie gets 28 and Maisie gets 22 sweets. How many will they each get, once they have put them together and shared them out?

Answer (2 marks): 28 sweets each

34 + 28 + 22 = 84 sweets

84  ÷ 3 = 28

We hope that this collection of word problems for Year 3 becomes a useful resource in your Year 3 maths classroom. For more Year 3 maths resources, take a look at our library of Year 3 maths worksheets .

Third Space Learning also offers a wide array of maths and word problems resources for other year groups such as word problems for year 6 , word problems for Year 5 and word problems for year 4 . Our practice word problems cover all four operations and include more specific topics such as percentage word problems and ratio word problems .

Do you have pupils who need extra support in maths? Every week Third Space Learning’s maths specialist tutors support thousands of pupils across hundreds of schools with weekly online 1-to-1 lessons and maths interventions designed to address learning gaps and boost progress. Since 2013 we’ve helped over 162,000 primary and secondary school pupils become more confident, able mathematicians. Learn more or request a personalised quote for your school to speak to us about your school’s needs and how we can help.

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Year 3 - Maths Problem solving bundle

Subject: Maths for early years

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

14 January 2021

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This is a bundle of SEVEN files covering

Year 3 PS -1-addition Year 3 PS -3-subtraction Year 3 PS -3-add and subtract Year 3 PS -4-doubles Year 3 PS -5-sharing and halving Year 3 PS -6-giving change Year 3 PS -7-place value

for Year 3 National Curriculum for UK.

I feel that Problem Solving – which is part of the UK National Curriculum – allows students to take on some of the responsibility for their own learning. Problem solving is essential for developing mathematical knowledge at all levels of Mathematical Curriculum. Problem solving gives students a context to help them make sense out of the mathematics they are learning. When students encounter a problem they can focus their thinking and visualize on finding the appropriate solution.

For this reason the above 7 problem solving worksheets include a variety of different scenarios for year 3 students.

I hope you enjoy using them. If you have any comments please send them to me via my website: www.amynahbhanji.com

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Problem Solving

 A selection of resources containing a wide range of open-ended tasks, practical tasks, investigations and real life problems, to support investigative work and problem solving in primary mathematics.

Problem Solving in Primary Maths - the Session

Quality Assured Category: Mathematics Publisher: Teachers TV

In this programme shows a group of four upper Key Stage Two children working on a challenging problem; looking at the interior and exterior angles of polygons and how they relate to the number of sides. The problem requires the children to listen to each other and to work together co-operatively. The two boys and two girls are closely observed as they consider how to tackle the problem, make mistakes, get stuck and arrive at the "eureka" moment. They organise the data they collect and are then able to spot patterns and relate them to the original problem to find a formula to work out the exterior angle of any polygon. At the end of the session the children report back to Mark, explaining how they arrived at the solution, an important part of the problem solving process.

In a  second video  two maths experts discuss some of the challenges of teaching problem solving. This includes how and at what stage to introduce problem solving strategies and the appropriate moment to intervene when children find tasks difficult. They also discuss how problem solving in the curriculum also helps to develop life skills.

Cards for Cubes: Problem Solving Activities for Young Children

Quality Assured Category: Mathematics Publisher: Claire Publications

This book provides a series of problem solving activities involving cubes. The tasks start simply and progress to more complicated activities so could be used for different ages within Key Stages One and Two depending on ability. The first task is a challenge to create a camel with 50 cubes that doesn't fall over. Different characters are introduced throughout the book and challenges set to create various animals, monsters and structures using different numbers of cubes. Problems are set to incorporate different areas of mathematical problem solving they are: using maths, number, algebra and measure.

Problem solving with EYFS, Key Stage One and Key Stage Two children

Quality Assured Category: Computing Publisher: Department for Education

These three resources, from the National Strategies, focus on solving problems.

  Logic problems and puzzles  identifies the strategies children may use and the learning approaches teachers can plan to teach problem solving. There are two lessons for each age group.

Finding all possibilities focuses on one particular strategy, finding all possibilities. Other resources that would enhance the problem solving process are listed, these include practical apparatus, the use of ICT and in particular Interactive Teaching Programs .

Finding rules and describing patterns focuses on problems that fall into the category 'patterns and relationships'. There are seven activities across the year groups. Each activity includes objectives, learning outcomes, resources, vocabulary and prior knowledge required. Each lesson is structured with a main teaching activity, drawing together and a plenary, including probing questions.

Primary mathematics classroom resources

Quality Assured Collection Category: Mathematics Publisher: Association of Teachers of Mathematics

This selection of 5 resources is a mixture of problem-solving tasks, open-ended tasks, games and puzzles designed to develop students' understanding and application of mathematics.

Thinking for Ourselves: These activities, from the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (ATM) publication 'Thinking for Ourselves’, provide a variety of contexts in which students are encouraged to think for themselves. Activity 1: In the bag – More or less requires students to record how many more or less cubes in total...

8 Days a Week: The resource consists of eight questions, one for each day of the week and one extra. The questions explore odd numbers, sequences, prime numbers, fractions, multiplication and division.

Number Picnic: The problems make ideal starter activities

Matchstick Problems: Contains two activities concentrating upon the process of counting and spotting patterns. Uses id eas about the properties of number and the use of knowledge and reasoning to work out the rules.

Colours: Use logic, thinking skills and organisational skills to decide which information is useful and which is irrelevant in order to find the solution.

GAIM Activities: Practical Problems

Quality Assured Category: Mathematics Publisher: Nelson Thornes

Designed for secondary learners, but could also be used to enrich the learning of upper primary children, looking for a challenge. These are open-ended tasks encourage children to apply and develop mathematical knowledge, skills and understanding and to integrate these in order to make decisions and draw conclusions.

Examples include:

*Every Second Counts - Using transport timetables, maps and knowledge of speeds to plan a route leading as far away from school as possible in one hour.

*Beach Guest House - Booking guests into appropriate rooms in a hotel.

*Cemetery Maths - Collecting relevant data from a visit to a local graveyard or a cemetery for testing a hypothesis.

*Design a Table - Involving diagrams, measurements, scale.

Go Further with Investigations

Quality Assured Category: Mathematics Publisher: Collins Educational

A collection of 40 investigations designed for use with the whole class or smaller groups. It is aimed at upper KS2 but some activities may be adapted for use with more able children in lower KS2. It covers different curriculum areas of mathematics.

Starting Investigations

The forty student investigations in this book are non-sequential and focus mainly on the mathematical topics of addition, subtraction, number, shape and colour patterns, and money.

The apparatus required for each investigation is given on the student sheets and generally include items such as dice, counters, number cards and rods. The sheets are written using as few words as possible in order to enable students to begin working with the minimum of reading.

NRICH Primary Activities

Explore the NRICH primary tasks which aim to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners. Lots of whole class open ended investigations and problem solving tasks. These tasks really get children thinking!

Mathematical reasoning: activities for developing thinking skills

Quality Assured Category: Mathematics Publisher: SMILE

Problem Solving 2

Reasoning about numbers, with challenges and simplifications.

Quality Assured Category: Mathematics Publisher: Department for Education

Reasoning/Problem Solving Maths Worksheets for Year 3 (age 7-8)

Money problems and challenges.

A variety of problem solving activities involving money.

50p to spend, but can you make sure you get the correct change?

Watch out when writing pence as pounds and remember to always have two digits after the decimal point.

The hardest part of these money problems is to read the question and work out what to do.

Put three items in your basket that you would like to buy and then use the money cards to work out the sum.

Solve money problems using the information provided.

Solve money problems at the skating rink.

Plenty of monkey business here!

It's a trip to the zoo to find the very best value.

Some tricky money problems to solve.

More tricky money problems to solve.

Finding different amounts from a given set of coins.

Number and calculating problems

Solve number problems and calculating using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Find the 2-digit numbers that can be made using these digit cards.

Make 2-digit numbers and find the smallest and largest numbers.

More on finding 2-digit numbers from three digit cards.

Tricky little problems involving monsters' legs.

Use logic, addition and subtraction to find out how many strawberries are eaten.

Bar Model: addition and subtraction facts.

Use bar models to add and subtract.

Encourage children to make addition and subtraction come to life by writing short number stories.

What numbers can you make with digit cards?

What are the largest and smallest numbers that can be made with 3 cards?

More number stories to write: this time all about multiplication and division.

All the numbers are here, but the signs are missing! Can you work out what the signs should be?

Investigating odd and even numbers and what happens when you add them together.

Use knowledge of place value to find all possible answers.

Finding the numbers and missing digits to make number sentences correct.

Investigate statements involving odd and even numbers.

Investigate statements about multiplication and times tables.

I?m good at thinking of numbers, but can you work out what number I am thinking about ? I do give a clue!

Work out the missing value using division and addition.

Use reasoning to find the missing values.

More on finding the missing values - an early introduction to algebra.

Use division and addition to find the missing values.

Find the missing values from the information given.

More on finding the value using reasoning.

Real life and word problems

A selection of real life problems and word problems.

Tricky word problems.

More tricky word problems.

Tricky questions, but you only have to carry out one maths step to answer them.

Even trickier questions, and you have to carry out at least two steps to work them out!

More word problems, from the library to shopping and on to flying around the world.

Here we have four pages of questions all on time, including a trip to Alicante!

Solving tricky fraction problems.

More challenges and activities

A great selection of activities requiring logical thinking.

Investigation looking at possibilities when adding the digits from 1 to 5.

This time you can decide the total for the sides of the triangle.

Can you put the numbers 1 to 9 in the diagram so that the difference between each pair of joined numbers is odd?

This challenge is to find as many ways as possible of making 12 using three number cards and the add, subtract and multiply signs.

A development of the 'Caterpillar investigation' but using multiples of 10. Great for practising addition.

3 dinosaurs laid some eggs. They laid 19 altogether. How many did they each lay?

How many ways can three runners cover a distance of 19 miles? They all have to run an odd number of miles.

A book challenge here. How accurately can you guess the number of pages in books?

2D card shapes and a 3 x 3 pinboard are useful for these shape activities.

A calculator is needed to find how many different answers can be made from the numbers given. Good for working in an organised, logical way.

A brief summary of some of the most important maths concepts to be taught in Year 3 by way of challenges and investigations.

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Problem-solving Investigations - Year 3

The problem-solving investigations below match Hamilton’s weekly maths plans. We now also provide Year 3 maths as  short blocks . We will eventually be phasing out the plans, as we believe our short blocks offer you all of the same advantages and more, including the integration of the problem-solving investigations into each unit of study. Find out more about the  advantages of Hamilton's short blocks .

Using exactly three coins, children work out how many amounts can be made between £1 and £2.

Children use reasoning skills to solve a number puzzle. They use numbers 0 to 7 to make a total of 10 on each side of a square.

Children subtract a number which is the reverse of another, e.g. 62 - 26.

Children play a game for two where strategy and identifying triangles are both crucial.

Children draw on their knowledge of multiples of 2 and 5 to create these using digit cards 0 - 9.

Children use their knowledge of counting in 10s to solve a problem involving money.

Children arrange the ‘nearly numbers’ in a square so that each row and column adds to Magic 147.

Following simple rules children find ways to make 100 based on four dice throws. They practise adding four numbers with a total around 100 and use this to find a solution.

Children practise reading times on a digital display and work systematically to find out which times won’t show correctly because of a faulty segment on the clock display.

Children use their knowledge of the 3, 4 and 5 times tables to work out mystery numbers using a series of logical clues.

Children use their knowledge of fractions and tables to solve logic puzzles and find mystery numbers.

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The 3-body problem is real, and it’s really unsolvable

Oh god don’t make me explain math

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Everybody seems to be talking about 3 Body Problem , the new Netflix series based on Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past book trilogy . Fewer people are talking about the two series’ namesake: The unsolvable physics problem of the same name.

This makes sense, because it’s confusing . In physics, the three-body problem attempts to find a way to predict the movements of three objects whose gravity interacts with each of the others — like three stars that are close together in space. Sounds simple enough, right? Yet I myself recently pulled up the Wikipedia article on the three-body problem and closed the tab in the same manner that a person might stagger away from a bright light. Apparently the Earth, sun, and moon are a three-body system? Are you telling me we don’t know how the moon moves ? Scientists have published multiple solutions for the three-body problem? Are you telling me Cixin Liu’s books are out of date?

All I’d wanted to know was why the problem was considered unsolvable, and now memories of my one semester of high school physics were swimming before my eyes like so many glowing doom numbers. However, despite my pains, I have readied several ways that we non-physicists can be confident that the three-body problem is, in fact, unsolvable.

Reason 1: This is a special definition of ‘unsolvable’

The three-body problem is extra confusing, because scientists are seemingly constantly finding new solutions to the three-body problem! They just don’t mean a one-solution-for-all solution. Such a formula does exist for a two-body system, and apparently Isaac Newton figured it out in 1687 . But systems with more than two bodies are, according to physicists, too chaotic (i.e., not in the sense of a child’s messy bedroom, but in the sense of “chaos theory”) to be corralled by a single solution.

When physicists say they have a new solution to the three-body problem, they mean that they’ve found a specific solution for three-body systems that have certain theoretical parameters. Don’t ask me to explain those parameters, because they’re all things like “the three masses are collinear at each instant” or “a zero angular momentum solution with three equal masses moving around a figure-eight shape.” But basically: By narrowing the focus of the problem to certain arrangements of three-body systems, physicists have been able to derive formulas that predict the movements of some of them, like in our solar system. The mass of the Earth and the sun create a “ restricted three-body problem ,” where a less-big body (in this case, the moon) moves under the influence of two massive ones (the Earth and the sun).

What physicists mean when they say the three-body problem has no solution is simply that there isn’t a one-formula-fits-all solution to every way that the gravity of three objects might cause those objects to move — which is exactly what Three-Body Problem bases its whole premise on.

Reason 2: 3 Body Problem picked an unsolved three-body system on purpose

Henri Poincaré’s research into a general solution to the three-body problem formed the basis of what would become known as chaos theory (you might know it from its co-starring role in Jurassic Park ). And 3 Body Problem itself isn’t about any old three-body system. It’s specifically about an extremely chaotic three-body system, the exact kind of arrangement of bodies that Poincaré was focused on when he showed that the problem is “unsolvable.”

[ Ed. note: The rest of this section includes some spoilers for 3 Body Problem .]

In both Liu’s books and Netflix’s 3 Body Problem , humanity faces an invasion by aliens (called Trisolarans in the English translation of the books, and San-Ti in the TV series) whose home solar system features three suns in a chaotic three-body relationship. It is a world where, unlike ours, the heavens are fundamentally unpredictable. Periods of icy cold give way to searing heat that give way to swings in gravity that turn into temporary reprieves that can never be trusted. The unpredictable nature of the San-Ti environment is the source of every detail of their physicality, their philosophy, and their desire to claim Earth for their own.

In other words, 3 Body Problem ’s three-body problem is unsolvable because Liu wanted to write a story with an unsolvable three-body system, so he chose one of the three-body systems for which we have not discovered a solution, and might never.

Reason 3: Scientists are still working on the three-body problem

Perhaps the best reason I can give you to believe that the three-body problem is real, and is really unsolvable, is that some scientists published a whole set of new solutions for specific three-body systems very recently .

If physicists are still working on the three-body problem, we can safely assume that it has not been solved. Scientists, after all, are the real experts. And I am definitely not.

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Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem

The former republican national committee chairwoman was hired by nbc and then let go after an outcry..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, the saga of Ronna McDaniel and NBC and what it reveals about the state of television news headed into the 2024 presidential race. Jim Rutenberg, a “Times” writer at large, is our guest.

It’s Monday, April 1.

Jim, NBC News just went through a very public, a very searing drama over the past week, that we wanted you to make sense of in your unique capacity as a longtime media and political reporter at “The Times.” This is your sweet spot. You were, I believe, born to dissect this story for us.

Oh, brother.

Well, on the one hand, this is a very small moment for a major network like NBC. They hire, as a contributor, not an anchor, not a correspondent, as a contributor, Ronna McDaniel, the former RNC chairwoman. It blows up in a mini scandal at the network.

But to me, it represents a much larger issue that’s been there since that moment Donald J. Trump took his shiny gold escalator down to announce his presidential run in 2015. This struggle by the news media to figure out, especially on television, how do we capture him, cover him for all of his lies, all the challenges he poses to Democratic norms, yet not alienate some 74, 75 million American voters who still follow him, still believe in him, and still want to hear his reality reflected in the news that they’re listening to?

Right. Which is about as gnarly a conundrum as anyone has ever dealt with in the news media.

Well, it’s proven so far unsolvable.

Well, let’s use the story of what actually happened with Ronna McDaniel and NBC to illustrate your point. And I think that means describing precisely what happened in this situation.

The story starts out so simply. It’s such a basic thing that television networks do. As elections get underway, they want people who will reflect the two parties.

They want talking heads. They want insiders. They want them on their payroll so they can rely on them whenever they need them. And they want them to be high level so they can speak with great knowledge about the two major candidates.

Right. And rather than needing to beg these people to come on their show at 6 o’clock, when they might be busy and it’s not their full-time job, they go off and they basically put them on retainer for a bunch of money.

Yeah. And in this case, here’s this perfect scenario because quite recently, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee through the Trump era, most of it, is now out on the market. She’s actually recently been forced out of the party. And all the networks are interested because here’s the consummate insider from Trump world ready to get snatched up under contract for the next election and can really represent this movement that they’ve been trying to capture.

So NBC’S key news executives move pretty aggressively, pretty swiftly, and they sign her up for a $300,000 a year contributor’s contract.

Nice money if you can get it.

Not at millions of dollars that they pay their anchors, but a very nice contract. I’ll take it. You’ll take it. In the eyes of NBC execs she was perfect because she can be on “Meet the Press” as a panelist. She can help as they figure out some of their coverage. They have 24 hours a day to fill and here’s an official from the RNC. You can almost imagine the question that would be asked to her. It’s 10:00 PM on election night. Ronna, what are the Trump people thinking right now? They’re looking at the same numbers you are.

That was good, but that’s exactly it. And we all know it, right? This is television in our current era.

So last Friday, NBC makes what should be a routine announcement, but one they’re very proud of, that they’ve hired Ronna McDaniel. And in a statement, they say it couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team. So all’s good, right? Except for there’s a fly in the ointment.

Because it turns out that Ronna McDaniel has been slated to appear on “Meet the Press,” not as a paid NBC contributor, but as a former recently ousted RNC chair with the “Meet The Press” host, Kristen Welker, who’s preparing to have a real tough interview with Ronna McDaniel. Because of course, Ronna McDaniel was chair of the party and at Trump’s side as he tried to refuse his election loss. So this was supposed to be a showdown interview.

From NBC News in Washington, the longest-running show in television history. This is “Meet The Press” with Kristen Welker.

And here, all of a sudden, Kristin Welker is thrown for a loop.

In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor.

Because now, she’s actually interviewing a member of the family who’s on the same payroll.

Right. Suddenly, she’s interviewing a colleague.

This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.

So what happens during the interview?

So Welker is prepared for a tough interview, and that’s exactly what she does.

Can you say, as you sit here today, did Joe Biden win the election fair and square?

He won. He’s the legitimate president.

Did he win fair and square?

Fair and square, he won. It’s certified. It’s done.

She presses her on the key question that a lot of Republicans get asked these days — do you accept Joe Biden was the winner of the election?

But, I do think, Kristen —

Ronna, why has it taken you until now to say that? Why has it taken you until now to be able to say that?

I’m going to push back a little.

McDaniel gets defensive at times.

Because I do think it’s fair to say there were problems in 2020. And to say that does not mean he’s not the legitimate president.

But, Ronna, when you say that, it suggests that there was something wrong with the election. And you know that the election was the most heavily scrutinized. Chris Krebs —

It’s a really combative interview.

I want to turn now to your actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

And Welker actually really does go deeply into McDaniel’s record in those weeks before January 6.

On November 17, you and Donald Trump were recorded pushing two Republican Michigan election officials not to certify the results of the election. And on the call —

For instance, she presses McDaniel on McDaniel’s role in an attempt to convince a couple county commissioner level canvassers in Michigan to not certify Biden’s victory.

Our call that night was to say, are you OK? Vote your conscience. Not pushing them to do anything.

McDaniel says, look, I was just telling them to vote their conscience. They should do whatever they think is right.

But you said, do not sign it. If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. How can people read that as anything other than a pressure campaign?

And Welker’s not going to just let her off the hook. Welker presses her on Trump’s own comments about January 6 and Trump’s efforts recently to gloss over some of the violence, and to say that those who have been arrested, he’ll free them.

Do you support that?

I want to be very clear. The violence that happened on January 6 is unacceptable.

And this is a frankly fascinating moment because you can hear McDaniel starting to, if not quite reverse some of her positions, though in some cases she does that, at least really soften her language. It’s almost as if she’s switching uniforms from the RNC one to an NBC one or almost like breaking from a role she was playing.

Ronna, why not speak out earlier? Why just speak out about that now?

When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right? Now, I get to be a little bit more myself.

She says, hey, you know what? Sometimes as RNC chair, you just have to take it for the team sometimes.

Right. What she’s really saying is I did things as chairwoman of the Republican National committee that now that I no longer have that job, I can candidly say, I wished I hadn’t done, which is very honest. But it’s also another way of saying I’m two faced, or I was playing a part.

Ronna McDaniel, thank you very much for being here this morning.

Then something extraordinary happens. And I have to say, I’ve never seen a moment like this in decades of watching television news and covering television news.

Welcome back. The panel is here. Chuck Todd, NBC News chief political analyst.

Welker brings her regular panel on, including Chuck Todd, now the senior NBC political analyst.

Chuck, let’s dive right in. What were your takeaways?

And he launches right into what he calls —

Look, let me deal with the elephant in the room.

The elephant being this hiring of McDaniel.

I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.

And he proceeds, on NBC’S air, to lace into management for, as he describes it, putting Welker in this crazy awkward position.

Because I don’t know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract.

And Todd is very hung up on this idea that when she was speaking for the party, she would say one thing. And now that she’s on the payroll at NBC, she’s saying another thing.

She has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself, or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?

Todd is basically saying, how are we supposed to know which one to believe.

What can we believe?

It is important for this network and for always to have a wide aperture. Having ideological diversity on this panel is something I prided myself on.

And what he’s effectively saying is that his bosses should have never hired her in this capacity.

I understand the motivation, but this execution, I think, was poor.

Someone said to me last night we live in complicated times. Thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate it.

Now, let’s just note here, this isn’t just any player at NBC. Chuck Todd is obviously a major news name at the network. And him doing this appears to just open the floodgates across the entire NBC News brand, especially on its sister cable network, MSNBC.

And where I said I’d never seen anything like what I saw on “Meet the Press” that morning, I’d never seen anything like this either. Because now, the entire MSNBC lineup is in open rebellion. I mean, from the minute that the sun comes up. There is Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring. But if we were, we would have strongly objected to it.

They’re on fire over this.

believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.

But it rolls out across the entire schedule.

Because Ronna McDaniel has been a major peddler of the big lie.

The fact that Ms. McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News, to me that is inexplicable. I mean, you wouldn’t hire a mobster to work at a DA’s office.

Rachel Maddow devotes an entire half hour.

It’s not about just being associated with Donald Trump and his time in the Republican Party. It’s not even about lying or not lying. It’s about our system of government.

Thumbing their noses at our bosses and basically accusing them of abetting a traitorous figure in American history. I mean, just extraordinary stuff. It’s television history.

And let’s face it, we journalists, our bosses, we can be seen as crybabies, and we’re paid complaining. Yeah, that’s what we’re paid to do. But in this case, the NBC executives cannot ignore this, because in the outcry, there’s a very clear point that they’re all making. Ronna McDaniel is not just a voice from the other side. She was a fundamental part of Trump’s efforts to deny his election loss.

This is not inviting the other side. This is someone who’s on the wrong side —

Of history.

Of history, of these moments that we’ve covered and are still covering.

And I think it’s fair to say that at this point, everyone understands that Ronna McDaniel’s time at NBC News is going to be very short lived. Yeah, basically, after all this, the executives at NBC have to face facts it’s over. And on Tuesday night, they release a statement to the staff saying as much.

They don’t cite the questions about red lines or what Ronna McDaniel represented or didn’t represent. They just say we need to have a unified newsroom. We want cohesion. This isn’t working.

I think in the end, she was a paid contributor for four days.

Yeah, one of the shortest tenures in television news history. And look, in one respect, by their standards, this is kind of a pretty small contract, a few hundred thousand dollars they may have to pay out. But it was way more costly because they hired her. They brought her on board because they wanted to appeal to these tens of millions of Americans who still love Donald J. Trump.

And what happens now is that this entire thing is blown up in their face, and those very same people now see a network that, in their view, in the view of Republicans across the country, this network will not accept any Republicans. So it becomes more about that. And Fox News, NBC’S longtime rival, goes wall to wall with this.

Now, NBC News just caved to the breathless demands from their far left, frankly, emotionally unhinged host.

I mean, I had it on my desk all day. And every minute I looked at that screen, it was pounding on these liberals at NBC News driving this Republican out.

It’s the shortest tenure in TV history, I think. But why? Well, because she supports Donald Trump, period.

So in a way, this leaves NBC worse off with that Trump Republican audience they had wanted to court than maybe even they were before. It’s like a boomerang with a grenade on it.

Yeah, it completely explodes in their face. And that’s why to me, the whole episode is so representative of this eight-year conundrum for the news media, especially on television. They still haven’t been able to crack the code for how to handle the Trump movement, the Trump candidacy, and what it has wrought on the American political system and American journalism.

We’ll be right back.

Jim, put into context this painful episode of NBC into that larger conundrum you just diagnosed that the media has faced when it comes to Trump.

Well, Michael, it’s been there from the very beginning, from the very beginning of his political rise. The media was on this kind of seesaw. They go back and forth over how to cover him. Sometimes they want to cover him quite aggressively because he’s such a challenging candidate. He was bursting so many norms.

But at other times, there was this instinct to understand his appeal, for the same reason. He’s such an unusual candidate. So there was a great desire to really understand his voters. And frankly, to speak to his voters, because they’re part of the audience. And we all lived it, right?

But just let me take you back anyway because everything’s fresh again with perspective. And so if you go back, let’s look at when he first ran. The networks, if you recall, saw him as almost like a novelty candidate.

He was going to spice up what was expected to be a boring campaign between the usual suspects. And he was a ratings magnet. And the networks, they just couldn’t get enough of it. And they allowed him, at times, to really shatter their own norms.

Welcome back to “Meet the Press,” sir.

Good morning, Chuck.

Good morning. Let me start —

He was able to just call into the studio and riff with the likes of George Stephanopoulos and Chuck Todd.

What does it have to do with Hillary?

She can’t talk about me because nobody respects women more than Donald Trump.

And CNN gave him a lot of unmitigated airtime, if you recall during the campaign. They would run the press conferences.

It’s the largest winery on the East Coast. I own it 100 percent.

And let him promote his Trump steaks and his Trump wine.

Trump steaks. Where are the steaks? Do we have steaks?

I mean, it got that crazy. But again, the ratings were huge. And then he wins. And because they had previously given him all that airtime, they’ve, in retrospect, sort of given him a political gift, and more than that now have a journalistic imperative to really address him in a different way, to cover him as they would have covered any other candidate, which, let’s face it, they weren’t doing initially. So there’s this extra motivation to make up for lost ground and maybe for some journalistic omissions.

Right. Kind of correct for the lack of a rigorous journalistic filter in the campaign.

Exactly. And the big thing that this will be remembered for is we’re going to call a lie a lie.

I don’t want to sugarcoat this because facts matter, and the fact is President Trump lies.

Trump lies. We’re going to say it’s a lie.

And I think we can’t just mince around it because they are lies. And so we need to call them what they are.

We’re no longer going to use euphemisms or looser language we’re. Going to call it for what it is.

Trump lies in tweets. He spreads false information at rallies. He lies when he doesn’t need to. He lies when the truth is more than enough for him.

CNN was running chyrons. They would fact check Trump and call lies lies on the screen while Trump is talking. They were challenging Trump to his face —

One of the statements that you made in the tail end of the campaign in the midterms that —

Here we go.

That — well, if you don’t mind, Mr. President, that this caravan was an invasion.

— in these crazy press conferences —

They’re are hundreds of miles away, though. They’re hundreds and hundreds of miles away. That’s not an invasion.

Honestly, I think you should let me run the country. You run CNN. And if you did it well, your ratings —

Well, let me ask — if I may ask one other question. Mr. President, if I may ask another question. Are you worried —

That’s enough. That’s enough.

And Trump is giving it right back.

I tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN.

Very combative.

So this was this incredibly fraught moment for the American press. You’ve got tens of millions of Trump supporters seeing what’s really basic fact checking. These look like attacks to Trump supporters. Trump, in turn, is calling the press, the reporters are enemies of the people. So it’s a terrible dynamic.

And when January 6 happens, it’s so obviously out of control. And what the traditional press that follows, traditional journalistic rules has to do is make it clear that the claims that Trump is making about a stolen election are just so abjectly false that they don’t warrant a single minute of real consideration once the reporting has been done to show how false they are. And I think that American journalism really emerged from that feeling strongly about its own values and its own place in society.

But then there’s still tens of millions of Trump voters, and they don’t feel so good about the coverage. And they don’t agree that January 6 was an insurrection. And so we enter yet another period, where the press is going to have to now maybe rethink some things.

In what way?

Well, there’s a kind of quiet period after January 6. Trump is off of social media. The smoke is literally dissipating from the air in Washington. And news executives are kind of standing there on the proverbial battlefield, taking a new look at their situation.

And they’re seeing that in this clearer light, they’ve got some new problems, perhaps none more important for their entire business models than that their ratings are quickly crashing. And part of that diminishment is that a huge part of the country, that Trump-loving part of the audience, is really now severed from him from their coverage.

They see the press as actually, in some cases, being complicit in stealing an election. And so these news executives, again, especially on television, which is so ratings dependent, they’ve got a problem. So after presumably learning all these lessons about journalism and how to confront power, there’s a first subtle and then much less subtle rethinking.

Maybe we need to pull back from that approach. And maybe we need to take some new lessons and switch it up a little bit and reverse some of what we did. And one of the best examples of this is none other than CNN.

It had come under new management, was being led by a guy named Chris Licht, a veteran of cable news, but also Stephen Colbert’s late night show in his last job. And his new job under this new management is we’re going to recalibrate a little bit. So Chris Licht proceeds to try to bring the network back to the center.

And how does he do that?

Well, we see some key personalities who represented the Trump combat era start losing air time and some of them lose their jobs. There’s talk of, we want more Republicans on the air. There was a famous magazine article about Chris Licht’s balancing act here.

And Chris Licht says to a reporter, Tim Alberta of the “Atlantic” magazine, look, a lot in the media, including at his own network, quote unquote, “put on a jersey, took a side.” They took a side. And he says, I think we understand that jersey cannot go back on him. Because he says in the end of the day, by the way, it didn’t even work. We didn’t change anyone’s mind.

He’s saying that confrontational approach that defined the four years Trump was in office, that was a reaction to the feeling that TV news had failed to properly treat Trump with sufficient skepticism, that that actually was a failure both of journalism and of the TV news business. Is that what he’s saying?

Yeah. On the business side, it’s easier call, right? You want a bigger audience, and you’re not getting the bigger audience. But he’s making a journalistic argument as well that if the job is to convey the truth and take it to the people, and they take that into account as they make their own voting decisions and formulate their own opinions about American politics, if tens of millions of people who do believe that election was stolen are completely tuning you out because now they see you as a political combatant, you’re not achieving your ultimate goal as a journalist.

And what does Licht’s “don’t put a jersey back on” approach look like on CNN for its viewers?

Well, It didn’t look good. People might remember this, but the most glaring example —

Please welcome, the front runner for the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump.

— was when he held a town hall meeting featuring Donald J. Trump, now candidate Trump, before an audience packed with Trump’s fans.

You look at what happened during that election. Unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens. A lot of the people —

Trump let loose a string of falsehoods.

Most people understand what happened. It was a rigged election.

The audience is pro-Trump audience, was cheering him on.

Are you ready? Are you ready? Can I talk?

Yeah, what’s your answer?

Can I? Do you mind?

I would like for you to answer the question.

OK. It’s very simple to answer.

That’s why I asked it.

It’s very simple. You’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you that.

And during, the CNN anchor hosting this, Kaitlan Collins, on CNN’s own air, it was a disaster.

It felt like a callback to the unlearned lessons of 2016.

Yeah. And in this case, CNN’s staff was up in arms.

Big shakeup in the cable news industry as CNN makes another change at the top.

Chris Licht is officially out at CNN after a chaotic run as chairman and CEO.

And Chris Licht didn’t survive it.

The chief executive’s departure comes as he faced criticism in recent weeks after the network hosted a town hall with Donald Trump and the network’s ratings started to drop.

But I want to say that the CNN leadership still, even after that, as they brought new leadership in, said, this is still the path we’re going to go on. Maybe that didn’t work out, but we’re still here. This is still what we have to do.

Right. And this idea is very much in the water of TV news, that this is the right overall direction.

Yeah. This is, by no means, isolated to CNN. This is throughout the traditional news business. These conversations are happening everywhere. But CNN was living it at that point.

And this, of course, is how we get to NBC deciding to hire Ronna McDaniel.

Right. Because they’re picking up — right where that conversation leaves off, they’re having the same conversation. But for NBC, you could argue this tension between journalistic values and audience. It’s even more pressing. Because even though MSNBC is a niche cable network, NBC News is part of an old-fashioned broadcast network. It’s on television stations throughout the country.

And in fact, those networks, they still have 6:30 newscasts. And believe it or not, millions of people still watch those every night. Maybe not as many as they used to, but there’s still some six or seven million people tuning in to nightly news. That’s important.

Right. We should say that kind of number is sometimes double or triple that of the cable news prime time shows that get all the attention.

On their best nights. So this is big business still. And that business is based on broad — it’s called broadcast for a reason. That’s based on broad audiences. So NBC had a business imperative, and they argue they had a journalistic imperative.

So given all of that, Jim, I think the big messy question here is, when it comes to NBC, did they make a tactical error around hiring the wrong Republican which blew up? Or did they make an even larger error in thinking that the way you handle Trump and his supporters is to work this hard to reach them, when they might not even be reachable?

The best way to answer that question is to tell you what they’re saying right now, NBC management. What the management saying is, yes, this was a tactical error. This was clearly the wrong Republican. We get it.

But they’re saying, we are going to — and they said this in their statement, announcing that they were severing ties with McDaniel. They said, we’re going to redouble our efforts to represent a broad spectrum of the American votership. And that’s what they meant was that we’re going to still try to reach these Trump voters with people who can relate to them and they can relate to.

But the question is, how do you even do that when so many of his supporters believe a lie? How is NBC, how is CNN, how are any of these TV networks, if they have decided that this is their mission, how are they supposed to speak to people who believe something fundamentally untrue as a core part of their political identity?

That’s the catch-22. How do you get that Trump movement person who’s also an insider, when the litmus test to be an insider in the Trump movement is to believe in the denialism or at least say you do? So that’s a real journalistic problem. And the thing that we haven’t really touched here is, what are these networks doing day in and day out?

They’re not producing reported pieces, which I think it’s a little easier. You just report the news. You go out into the world. You talk to people, and then you present it to the world as a nuanced portrait of the country. This thing is true. This thing is false. Again, in many cases, pretty straightforward. But their bread and butter is talking heads. It’s live. It’s not edited. It’s not that much reported.

So their whole business model especially, again, on cable, which has 24 hours to fill, is talking heads. And if you want the perspective from the Trump movement, journalistically, especially when it comes to denialism, but when it comes to some other major subjects in American life, you’re walking into a place where they’re going to say things that aren’t true, that don’t pass your journalistic standards, the most basic standards of journalism.

Right. So you’re saying if TV sticks with this model, the kind of low cost, lots of talk approach to news, then they are going to have to solve the riddle of who to bring on, who represents Trump’s America if they want that audience. And now they’ve got this red line that they’ve established, that that person can’t be someone who denies the 2020 election reality. But like you just said, that’s the litmus test for being in Trump’s orbit.

So this doesn’t really look like a conundrum. This looks like a bit of a crisis for TV news because it may end up meaning that they can’t hire that person that they need for this model, which means that perhaps a network like NBC does need to wave goodbye to a big segment of these viewers and these eyeballs who support Trump.

I mean, on the one hand, they are not ready to do that, and they would never concede that that’s something they’re ready to do. The problem is barring some kind of change in their news model, there’s no solution to this.

But why bar changes to their news model, I guess, is the question. Because over the years, it’s gotten more and more expensive to produce news, the news that I’m talking about, like recorded packages and what we refer to as reporting. Just go out and report the news.

Don’t gab about it. Just what’s going on, what’s true, what’s false. That’s actually very expensive in television. And they don’t have the kind of money they used to have. So the talking heads is their way to do programming at a level where they can afford it.

They do some packages. “60 Minutes” still does incredible work. NBC does packages, but the lion’s share of what they do is what we’re talking about. And that’s not going to change because the economics aren’t there.

So then a final option, of course, to borrow something Chris Licht said, is that a network like NBC perhaps doesn’t put a jersey on, but accepts the reality that a lot of the world sees them wearing a jersey.

Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to be seen as wearing a jersey in our business. No one wants to be wearing a jersey on our business. But maybe what they really have to accept is that we’re just sticking to the true facts, and that may look like we’re wearing a jersey, but we’re not. And that may, at times, look like it’s lining up more with the Democrats, but we’re not.

If Trump is lying about a stolen election, that’s not siding against him. That’s siding for the truth, and that’s what we’re doing. Easier said than done. And I don’t think any of these concepts are new.

I think there have been attempts to do that, but it’s the world they’re in. And it’s the only option they really have. We’re going to tell you the truth, even if it means that we’re going to lose a big part of the country.

Well, Jim, thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

Here’s what else you need to know today.

[PROTESTERS CHANTING]

Over the weekend, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in some of the largest domestic demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since Israel invaded Gaza in the fall.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Some of the protesters called on Netanyahu to reach a cease fire deal that would free the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. Others called for early elections that would remove Netanyahu from office.

During a news conference on Sunday, Netanyahu rejected calls for early elections, saying they would paralyze his government at a crucial moment in the war.

Today’s episode was produced by Rob Szypko, Rikki Novetsky, and Alex Stern, with help from Stella Tan.

It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg with help from Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett. Contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, and Rowan Niemisto and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• April 2, 2024   •   29:32 Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate
• April 1, 2024   •   36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
• March 29, 2024   •   48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
• March 28, 2024   •   33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.
• March 27, 2024   •   28:06 Democrats’ Plan to Save the Republican House Speaker
• March 26, 2024   •   29:13 The United States vs. the iPhone
• March 25, 2024   •   25:59 A Terrorist Attack in Russia
• March 24, 2024   •   21:39 The Sunday Read: ‘My Goldendoodle Spent a Week at Some Luxury Dog ‘Hotels.’ I Tagged Along.’
• March 22, 2024   •   35:30 Chuck Schumer on His Campaign to Oust Israel’s Leader
• March 21, 2024   •   27:18 The Caitlin Clark Phenomenon
• March 20, 2024   •   25:58 The Bombshell Case That Will Transform the Housing Market
• March 19, 2024   •   27:29 Trump’s Plan to Take Away Biden’s Biggest Advantage

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Jim Rutenberg

Produced by Rob Szypko ,  Rikki Novetsky and Alex Stern

With Stella Tan

Edited by Brendan Klinkenberg ,  Rachel Quester and Paige Cowett

Original music by Marion Lozano ,  Dan Powell and Rowan Niemisto

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Ronna McDaniel’s time at NBC was short. The former Republican National Committee chairwoman was hired as an on-air political commentator but released just days later after an on-air revolt by the network’s leading stars.

Jim Rutenberg, a writer at large for The Times, discusses the saga and what it might reveal about the state of television news heading into the 2024 presidential race.

On today’s episode

Jim Rutenberg , a writer at large for The New York Times.

Background reading

Ms. McDaniel’s appointment had been immediately criticized by reporters at the network and by viewers on social media.

The former Republican Party leader tried to downplay her role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A review of the record shows she was involved in some key episodes .

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Jim Rutenberg is a writer at large for The Times and The New York Times Magazine and writes most often about media and politics. More about Jim Rutenberg

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