Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple urged Democrats to turn off MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, on Thursday following the co-hosts’ decision to meet with President-elect Donald Trump.Â
“The explanation was a remarkable spectacle, one that’s sure to play on a loop in the eventual Smithsonian Museum of Cable News History. Scarborough and Brzezinski alternated with scripted elements of their spiel, a presentation heavy on preemptive strikes,” Wemple said, while repeatedly urging people that they were better off reading a newspaper.Â
The headline for the article suggested, “Five reasons Democrats should turn off ‘Morning Joe.’” The sub-headline critiqued, “What are you getting from this staple of morning TV ‘news?’” Wemple began, “And, as luck would have it, it’s all reducible to five reasons Democrats should turn off ‘Morning Joe.’”
Brzezinski and Scarborough revealed on Monday that they met with Trump for over an hour at Mar-a-Lago. Their meeting was met with criticism from the left, as the pair’s show is home to some of Trump’s biggest critics in the media.
“Historians will one day look back at the various opportunities this country has had to stop Trump,” Wemple wrote. “Perhaps the best one, though, came in the early months of his presidential primary campaign in 2015, when his hate-filled politics were clear but his base of support hadn’t quite hardened.”Â
The media columnist wrote that Scarborough “yukked it up” with Trump in 2015 and said MSNBC’s viewers “know too well what a Trump-‘Morning Joe’ meeting looks like.”
During the Monday announcement, Brzezinski explained that it was time for a change in their approach to the president-elect and added, “that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”
“Why cordon off a soul-searching segment of ‘Morning Joe’ for this quasi-revelation? Perhaps to send a signal to MSNBC’s resistance community: You might not like what you see on this program going forward. Could those folks have driven the ratings dip at ‘Morning Joe’ immediately following Monday’s announcement?” Wemple asked.Â
Trump told Fox News Digital that Brzezinski and Scarborough “congratulated me on running a ‘great and flawless campaign, one for the history books,’ which I really believe it was, but it was also a campaign where I worked long and hard — perhaps longer and harder than any presidential candidate in history.”Â
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“Think about this turn of events for a moment: ‘Morning Joe’ spent years denouncing Trump’s authoritarian plans and actions to its faithful audience. Then, one day, its hosts arrange a meeting that allows Trump to make that claim,” Wemple wrote, reacting to the statement from Trump.
Wemple also noted the co-hosts reaction to Special Counsel Robert Hurr’s report about President Biden that was released in February, specifically his finding that Biden is a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Scarborough called the claims “garbage,” and argued Hurr released “irrelevant conclusions, politically charged, Trump-like ramblings.”
“Stalwart behavior of that sort was no surprise, considering that Biden has been a devotee of the program and Scarborough has served as a sounding board for the president in private calls. That’s not to suggest that a cable-news host would allow proximity to power to cloud his news judgment in any way on any occasion,” Wemple wrote.Â
