In interviews, a half-dozen current and former NBC staffers, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, outlined a compounding list of problems: Inside the building, colleagues had grown envious of her large salary, exasperated by her on-air gaffes and disdainful of her low ratings.

“Everyone’s feeling is, even if you have to pay her [the remainder of her contract], pay her,” said another NBC staffer. “Andy, you can save face with this entire thing. Just get rid of her.”

Lack hinted Wednesday morning in a meeting with NBC staff that the situation was far from resolved, “as we sort this through with Megyn,” he said, but he wanted to assure colleagues that NBC was a place they could feel proud of…

“I think she became, in NBC’s eyes, a ‘voice of moderation’ because of the question she posed to Trump in a 2015 debate about the debasing rhetoric he’s used in talking about women,” Bill Grueskin, professor at Columbia Journalism School, said in an email. “That was a good question, but it didn’t, and doesn’t, absolve her of the insensitive, bordering on idiotic, things she’s said about racial issues.”