CBS hired Mick Mulvaney and the news network’s employees are voicing their disgust. The mainstream media is mostly filled with liberals and progressives who preach inclusiveness, except when it comes to working with conservatives. In their world, there is no room for differing political views or a desire to present both sides of an argument. So, when CBS hired Mulvaney, former White House Chief of Staff in the Trump Administration, the reaction was predictable. He’s not welcome.

Mulvaney was hired as a paid contributor, a talking head, to present his opinions on various topics. Political commentators, journalists, and others are angry that the network hired a conservative but CBS News co-President Neeraj Khemlani correctly said that a red wave is coming in November and likely in 2024, too, so it is just a practical decision to hire from both sides of the aisle now. The more conservatives on the payroll means more access to conservatives in elected office.

‘If you look at some of the people that we’ve been hiring on a contributor basis, being able to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms,’ Khemlani said in a leaked recording obtained by the Post.

‘A lot of the people that we’re bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation.’

CBS confirmed the new hiring practice in a statement, saying: ‘CBS News is continuing to build up its roster of contributors on both sides of the aisle ahead of the midterms and the 2024 election.’

It’s as though the network finally realized that a fair and balanced approach to discussing current events makes more sense than to concentrate on one demographic – a liberal audience. It is just good business practice to offer something for everyone rather than to only talk to maybe half of the country. It tells you everything you need to know about groupthink in the media when hiring two or three new employees who do not march in step with Democrats and their talking points creates a meltdown. The new hires should not even be a story but here we are.

Mulvaney’s hiring comes after CBS hired two other conservative hires that created less angst from CBS employees. Trump’s former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster was hired in March and fellow former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was hired in 2020. Both of them worked in the Trump administration, somewhat briefly as did Mulvaney, but Mulvaney is causing a different reaction because he has had strong criticism of journalists in the past.

Mick Mulvaney offers some pertinent experience and can contribute to many areas of discussion. Besides being Trump’s interim chief of staff, he is the former OMB director and was known as a budget and numbers guy in Congress when he served in the House.

Former OMB Director @MickMulvaney, who joins CBS News as a contributor, breaks down President Biden’s tax plan on wealthy Americans pic.twitter.com/Wh1m823631

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 29, 2022

Employees and contributors groused that CBS should “read the room” and forget about including people like Mulvaney… or else.

Eric Feigl Ding, an epidemiologist and co-founder of the World Health Network, said he was going to “boycott” CBS and tagged Susan Zirinsky, former CBS News president and CEO, asking her what she was thinking. He also said, “read the room.”

“Tell me you’re unserious about journalism without telling me you’re unserious about journalism,” Miranda Yaver, a professor at Oberlin, tweeted in response to the news.

Marcus Baram, a senior editor at Fast Company, tweeted that he hoped CBS had their fact-checkers on standby.

Podcast host and former political reporter Sam Youngman called the move “disgraceful.”

Others pointed to Mulvaney’s appearance at a 2019 press conference, where he indicated that there was quid pro quo with regard to former president Donald Trump withholding aid to Ukraine to leverage Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into helping an investigation of possible Ukrainian involvement with Democrats during the 2016 election.

I know. All of this is laughable from the conservative side of the aisle. Good thing there isn’t anything that we can point to that shows Biden threatening to withhold funds or aid to Ukraine if they didn’t do what he wanted, right? Oh yeah, that time in 2018 when Biden bragged about doing just that at the Council on Foreign Relations because he thought it made him look good and the audience approved of his story. Fact-checkers? Please. Get back to me when they start doing that with Biden’s daily lies and fabrications. Biden’s Ukraine story, by the way, had to do with shutting down an investigation into corruption, which, given his son’s history with Burisma, is not the good look he thinks he’s presenting. Biden and the Obama administration were trying to shut down an investigation into Hunter Biden’s slimy deals.

Mulvaney resigned in 2021 after the events of January 6.

A senior CBS News producer noted to disgruntled employees that 74.2 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020. That is a lot of potential viewers who don’t particularly want to see one-sided political discussions. Mulvaney issued a statement after he joined the network on Tuesday. ‘Looking forward to working with CBS News. We need more intelligent conversation in this country, and CBS is working hard to provide that.’

More intelligence. Fair and balanced discussions. It’s a start. Take all this kumbaya with a giant grain of salt, though. We’ve all seen the panel discussions on legacy broadcast networks. They are comprised of about three liberals to every one conservative panelist. We’ll see if that changes as the red wave approaches in November.