Joe and Mika’s Trip to Reconnect With Trump At Mar-a-Lago Backfires Spectacularly — For Very Good Reasons
Monday’s Morning Joe opened with co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s stunning revelation about a Friday visit with President-elect Donald Trump.
The MSNBC morning show hosts explained how they wanted to “restart communications” and that it was “time for a new approach” in covering the once and future Commander-in-chief, which was something of a brave, if perhaps too candid admission that their past seven years of warning about Trump — often with shouting and even tears — wasn’t serious. It also renders future warnings from these two as over-the-top hyperbole that can be just as easily as dismissed as these two forgave themselves Monday morning.
What may have been designed as a reset to usher in the next four years of Trump’s return to the White House was instead received with bipartisan mockery, which we rarely experience in this bitterly partisan time.
Why is the mockery bipartisan, you ask? Well, in part, because Morning Joe — the super-influential center-left opinion show that has long been held as the standard of the smart and well-informed political media influencer set of DC and NYC — has gone ALL IN on sounding the alarm about a second Trump term.
Over the past five+ years, viewers of MSNBC’s morning show could regularly find Scarborough shouting or Brzezinski appearing to hold back tears out of fear that a fascist authoritarian would run roughshod over this country. To be fair, their concerns were founded on the public insights shared by decorated military generals like Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, and John Kelly, who worked directly with Trump as his White House Chief of Staff.
Now, I don’t personally believe their meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago is ridiculous. I admire the chutzpah in engaging in dialog with a long time political foe. It’s the very behavior that the political media is missing and I do think that Scarborough and Brzezinski can thread a needle of criticism moving forward in a manner that befits their beliefs and have a better working relationship with the president.
Where I think they’ve borrowed trouble and will find significant friction moving forward is that it makes much of their vocal and over-the-top criticism of the past seven years suddenly seem moot, performative, or theatrical in retrospect. It’s the nature of cable news, which features a dynamic that is more similar to a middle school cafeteria and cool kids’ table than anyone is willing to admit. It’s by turns shameless and gross and it’s not just the MSNBC morning show hosts that are playing this game. It’s just that they made the first move.
However laudable it is that Scarborough and Brzezinski ostensibly went hat in hand to Mar-a-Lago to make nice with the primary subject of the next four years of coverage, they will also now be questioned about just how much they believe what they are saying. It may not be a fair criticism, but it’s a real one.
Their credibility, especially among the largely progressive and resistence set of MSNBC viewers? Well, it just went down a significant notch, which is a fascinating tactic at a time when MSNBC is losing viewers in droves and suffering record-low ratings. Will people tune into Morning Joe for a kinder, gentler review of Trump? It is hard to imagine that being the case, but maybe they are the very thought leaders who will lead a massive political reset that the nation sorely needs. (Don’t count on that.)
I’m reminded of a line from the famous boxing promoter (and early Trump ally) Don King. He spoke about a heavyweight title fight in Jamaica, in which he arrived with Joe Fraizer but left with his arm around the winning boxer, George Foreman. King said, “I came into the ring with the champion, “and I left with the champion.”
Shameless? Sure, but effective. And there is no room for shame in professional boxing or political media.
And there is one key individual who knows and appreciates that strategy greater than anyone else: Donald Trump. So while Trump’s surrogates are delighted to dunk on Scarborough and Brzezinski’s conversion from Saul to Paul, I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that Trump respects it more than anyone else.
Political media is a transactional world, and the economic relationship between Morning Joe and Trump just got a lot more mutually beneficial. The only question that remains is if the co-host’s new and potentially damaged reputation among many of its viewers is worth the audience and respect of Trump itself.
Tune in tomorrow to find out what they say about this and all other reactions! (Which is also, entirely the point.)
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.