Mika Brzezinski, who co-hosts MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” with her husband, Joe Scarborough, defended visiting Mar-a-Lago to pay homage to Donald Trump, in a podcast interview released Thursday.
Despite criticizing Trump for several years, the couple visited Trump following the election as part of a reported attempt to reestablish ties between the pair and the Republican leader.
Appearing on The Daily Beast podcast, Brzezinski was unapologetic about the decision to bend to Trump.
“It’s time to start talking face-to-face—on the record, on background, reconnecting. And it doesn’t have to be easy. It doesn’t have to be fun. It’s not supposed to be. It’s our job. So for us, it absolutely felt like the right thing to do because it is our job,” Brzezinski said.
Like Scarborough, Brzezinski took a page out of the Trump playbook and insisted that anonymous “leaders” who are “really powerful” had called her and told her the meeting was “the right thing to do.”
She went on to deride dissenting voices as something “happening online” and said she hoped the meeting with Trump would lead to an interview with the convicted felon in the future.
After announcing the meeting, Nielsen ratings show that viewers turned away from the program. The hosts have been criticized for negating their past criticisms of Trump by rushing to his side so quickly after the election.
Their behavior echoes others—like some of Trump’s Cabinet picks, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his running mate, JD Vance—who have leveled intense criticisms of Trump, only to become his allies.
At the same time, the “Morning Joe” hosts were among the softest on Trump when he first ran for president in 2016. Trump found a home at MSNBC’s flagship morning program and was allowed to smear and attack others—both Democrats and Republicans—with minimal response from Scarborough and Brzezinski.
The hosts are extremely wealthy, and while they have been personally insulted by Trump, they have the financial resources and support systems at the highest levels of media fame that would protect them against possible Trump attacks in the future.
Most of the people who have watched them over the years—and who likely believed them when they portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy and civil rights—do not have the same resources.
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