But hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski weren’t comfortable with blindly agreeing to a simulcast, the source said, since the two hosts couldn’t guarantee the town hall wouldn’t be made up entirely of “softball questions.” According to the source, the “Morning Joe” crew felt justified by their decision after seeing the town hall.
An MSNBC spokesperson pushed back on the characterization that “Morning Joe” was pressured to show the town hall, saying instead that an internal discussion about the event led to the decision that highlighting the news-making moments of the town hall was more valuable to viewers than airing it in its entirety.
(NBC has announced that Donald Trump has accepted an invitation to appear in his own “Today Show” town hall, though a date hasn’t been set.)
Sources in the Clinton and NBC camps acknowledged that four appearances in such a short period was an unusual phenomenon. But they noted the arrangements were made with separate bookers at the various shows, and explained that a variety of factors led to the burst of air time.
Clinton was in Miami to kick off her Latinas initiative with singer Marc Anthony, so a Telemundo appearance made sense. And her headquarters is based in New York, enabling the brief performance on SNL – which is always in need of a big name guest for its season premiere. (She appeared alongside actress Kate McKinnon, who plays Clinton on the show and is an outspoken Clinton supporter). The former secretary of state was also a great get for Sharpton’s new Sunday morning time slot – she was able to pre-tape on Thursday.
As for the crowning appearance, a “Today” show town hall from New Hampshire, that event had been in the works for weeks. “It was [all] a coincidence,” one Clinton campaign staffer said.
NBC News declined to comment. Sources at Telemundo said they had arranged their interview separately and directly with the campaign. An SNL spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Sources at competing networks noted that as the Democratic front-runner, and one who avoided interviews for months, any network would jump at the chance to have Clinton on. Since each separate outlet provided her with a different audience —from Hispanics at Telemundo to the millennials who watch SNL and the moms who watch “Today” — if anything, the competitors said, it looked like a coordinated effort engineered by the Clinton campaign.
“[Networks] always have to be concerned, every network does, with over saturation on any one topic and across all their platforms. On the other hand, sometimes saturation drives the ratings up. Donald Trump has certainly been doing that for months,” Feldstein said. “[Clinton] will choose places that are friendly places that have reach, places that have the most exposure and that’s the name of the game when you’re campaigning … if CBS could offer more venues, or ABC, they’d go with that."
The Clinton family has a history with NBC, for better and for worse. During the 2008 election cycle, the Clinton campaign nearly boycotted an MSNBC-hosted debate after an MSNBC correspondent made disparaging comments about the campaign “pimping out" Chelsea Clinton. But three years later, Chelsea Clinton was hired as a highly paid correspondent for the network, a position she held until 2014. According to a Vanity Fair report in August, many within the network felt like she "had been hired to maintain access to and curry favor with the Clintons.”
Clinton’s “Saturday Night Live” performance, where she was “Val”, the easy-going bartender chatting with 'Hillary Clinton,' played by McKinnon, proved to be a big hit — both for Clinton and NBC. Early ratings from Nielsen revealed that the premiere rose 13 percent from the season premiere last year, the show’s highest household rating since January.
The candidate, often criticized for being stiff and scripted, showed she was able to laugh at herself. During the “Weekend Update” portion about the Democratic debate, she was described as “the woman who has already won” while her rival, Bernie Sanders, was referred to as the “lorax” and the other three Democratic candidates were "three mannequins from Jos. A. Bank.”
The segment ended with an “I’m Hillary Clinton and I approve this message” statement, before an announcer voice said “Joke!"
The next morning featured Clinton’s pre-taped interview with Al Sharpton, the first Sunday iteration of his show, “Politics Nation.” It was a relatively gentle interview where she answered questions about what differentiated herself from her Democratic opponents, what her presidency would look like and race relations. The Telemundo interview was equally tame, focusing on immigration, income inequality and which Donald Trump remark she found most shocking.
On the “Today Show” Monday, Clinton was greeted in front of the town hall by co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, with a backdrop of supporters with Clinton signs. Inside the venue, the show cut to several shots of her meeting and greeting supporters. But after the warm welcome, Guthrie kicked off the interview with some hard hitting questions about why Clinton comes off as dishonest and stiff, and often followed up and pushed Clinton on other issues brought up by the town hall participants.
“You’ve been in politics for 20 years, so it’s not like people don’t know you. To just get real about it, are you having a problem connecting?” she asked, as part of an interview that took place before the town hall began.
While NBCUniversal’s Clinton marathon may have ended, the two sides aren’t finished with each other just yet.
In an online advertisement released Monday by the Clinton campaign, a snippet from a package Andrea Mitchell created and narrated is used to describe the Congressional Benghazi Committee as part of a plot to bring Clinton down. POLITICO has learned NBC News has sent the Clinton campaign a letter objecting to the use of the clip. On Tuesday, Mitchell said on her show that "NBC News in no way authorized them to use any of our material and we had no idea this was coming.”
Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.