Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, longtime co-hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, made a stunning announcement on Monday. After years of not participating with Donald Trump, the duo went all the way down to Mar-a-Lago to fulfill with the President-elect. “Joe and I noticed it is time to do one thing completely different,” Brzezinski stated. “And that begins with not solely speaking about Donald Trump, but in addition speaking with him.”
The pair’s go to to Trump headquarters marked the primary time that Brzezinski and Scarborough had seen the President-elect in particular person in seven years, in accordance with Brzezinski. They’d additionally not spoken to Trump straight since March of 2020, except for a brief name Scarborough had made to Trump following the assassination try at a Pennsylvania rally, in accordance with the Monday section.
Scarborough famous that they spoke to Trump a couple of multitude of considerations, together with abortion, immigration, and political retribution, to which he stated, “We did not see eye to eye on plenty of points.” Nonetheless, what they did agree on, was the choice to “restart communications” between the 2 camps. Brzezinski additionally challenged those that will probably query why the pair willingly met with Trump after overlaying him so ruthlessly all through his administration and past, saying “Why wouldn’t we,” pointing to “5 years of political warfare,” which has divided Washington considerably.
Brzezinski referenced her father, the late diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski, noting that he spoke with world leaders “he and the USA profoundly disagreed,” a “process shared by reporters and commentators alike.”
Whereas the pair had been shut with Trump throughout his first run for workplace in 2016, the connection eroded significantly because the hosts grew to become persistent critics and the previous president attacked Brzezinski repeatedly whereas in workplace. On social media, Trump referred to Brzezinski as “low I.Q. Loopy Mika” and claimed in a collection of posts that she had been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” at a social occasion held at Mar-a-Lago in 2017. Trump even promoted a conspiracy concept that Scarborough had dedicated homicide, a line of assault the host called “terribly merciless.”
Information of the Morning Joe hosts détente with Trump comes as MSNBC has struggled with cratering rankings following the election of Trump earlier this month, and amid questions on whether or not there might be the same urge for food for “resistance” media as there was in Trump’s first time period.
The week following Election Day, the cable community noticed a 39% decline in viewership in comparison with the community’s common in October. And primetime rankings noticed an much more important decline, dropping 53% in viewership, in accordance with Nielsen figures.
