Fox News contributor Donna Brazile late Tuesday addressed an on-air blowup directed at Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, with the former Democratic National Committee interim chairwoman describing herself as a “forgiving kind of person.”
“I just want to say that your tone has changed a little bit. You came in here a little bit hot and bothered, and you were spicy today,” anchor Bret Baier said to Brazile during the network’s coverage of Super Tuesday results. “And you had a little dust-up with Ronna McDaniel. Can you just explain that?”
“I must tell you the secret, I’m a forgiving kind of person,” Brazile replied before thanking several veteran members of the Fox News team for speaking to her after her earlier remarks went viral.
“I want to thank Chris Wallace and Brit Hume and Juan Williams. Yes, all three men,” she continued. “Juan gave me the fist bump. Chris gave me the talk. And Brit reminded me that, you know, sometimes you don’t, you shouldn’t call people out right.”
“But let me just say this, as long as I’m alive, I’m going to speak truth to power,” Brazile added. “And I want to make sure that the chairwoman, I know what her job is like, but I want her to understand, to respect the process on the Democratic side. He knows, Karl and I talk about this all the time. Democracy is messy, but do not tell the world that the Democratic Party is trying to rig it for one candidate. We’re trying to make sure everybody gets a delegate.”
Earlier Tuesday, Brazile told McDaniel to “go to hell” on two occasions over accusations the Democratic Party was working against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in his quest for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
Brazile, who was signed as a Fox News contributor last year, ripped McDaniel on the network’s mid-morning program “America’s Newsroom” after co-anchor Sandra Smith asked her to respond to McDaniel’s earlier remarks that the Democratic presidential race “is leading towards a brokered convention, which will be rigged against Bernie if those superdelegates have their way on that second vote.”
Brazile slammed Republicans before going after McDaniel.
“First of all, [Republicans] don’t have a process,” Brazile said. “They are canceling primaries. They have winner-take-all. They don’t have the kind of democracy that we see on the Democratic side.”
“For people to use Russian talking points to sow division among Americans, that is stupid,” she added. “So Ronna, go to hell! This is not about — No, go to hell! I’m tired of it!”
McDaniel later responded on Twitter.
“It’s ok, @donnabrazile, I’d be having a bad day too if my party was still hopelessly divided. Talk of a brokered convention and the DNC trying to stop Bernie obviously hit a little close to home,” she wrote.
Brazile late Tuesday went on to laud former Vice President Joe Biden’s performance on Super Tuesday, which propelled him into the lead in delegates after victories in Texas, Oklahoma and Minnesota, among other states. She called his comeback “the most impressive 72 hours I’ve seen in U.S. politics.”