On Thursday, as NBC News and MSNBC journalists were convalescing from their bosses’ duncical, whirlwind hiring-and-firing of former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, and the two-day, on-air insurrection that precipitated her ouster, NBC News president Rebecca Blumenstein took a trip from 30 Rock to 400 North Cap, in Washington, to assuage the anxieties of the D.C.-based reporters. And, of course, to volunteer as tribute for the pent-up rage of the correspondents and producers who hadn’t yet been afforded a turn with the whip.

In a meeting with the White House team, Blumenstein took the heat for almost 90 minutes. She acknowledged that the decision to hire McDaniel, which she and senior vice president of politics Carrie Budoff Brown had spearheaded, had been a mistake. She also stressed that it had been done with the best of intentions—though she was not able to quite articulate precisely why she and the rest of the leadership team had thought it was a good idea to hire a full-blown election denier at a time when trust in the media is at a nadir.