You know all that fretting MSNBC insiders were doing over what they saw as host Joe Scarborough's "unseemly" on-air promotion of his personal friend Donald Trump? It looks like the network heads have decided to just roll with it.
“Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski will moderate a town hall at 8 p.m. Wednesday with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, MSNBC announced Tuesday, thus setting the stage for a ratings battle against CNN's already scheduled Republican town hall.
Why stage a surprise "town hall" that features Donald Trump, and only Donald Trump? Because CNN had organized a town hall with three of the other presidential candidates for that same time, and apparently Donald Trump couldn't bear to be off the TV for even one night. This will allow him to sabotage the CNN-hosted candidates a bit by chipping into whatever media exposure their own town hall generates—before Trump himself appears on CNN the next day for a "town hall" with the remaining two candidates.
And yes, everyone is continuing to notice how Joe Scarborough always seems willing to help out his pal with a little debate advice or counter-programming sabotage.
CNN’s Dylan Byers reported Friday that there’s “widespread discomfort” inside the network over Scarborough’s chummy relationship to the Republican front-runner. On Sunday, Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik said on CNN's "Reliable Sources" that Scarborough's public boasts about giving Trump debate advice indicates he’s “completely unashamed” of being “in the tank” for the candidate.
So it looks bad, and people inside NBC know it looks bad, and non-NBC media critics are opining on how it looks bad, but ol' Morning Joe continues to attach himself to Trump's underbelly like a cable news remora. It goes to show just how inexplicably deferential the network's bosses continue to be toward their most conservative host. Whatever Joe wants, apparently, Joe gets.