‘People are Really Scared’: Mika Brzezinski Defends Meeting with Trump in New Podcast

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Mika Brzezinski revealed new details about the controversial visit she and Joe Scarborough made to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President Donald Trump.

“People are really scared,” she explained.

Brzezinski joined Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Joanna Coles and podcast co-host Samantha Bee for a convivial discussion about much of what’s happening in the news following Trump’s election, though the discussion focused primarily on the dust-up surrounding their meeting with Trump.

The Morning Joe meeting with the president-elect occurred nearly a week ago but was first revealed Monday morning at the start of the 6 a.m. hour of Morning Joe. The revelation inspired immediate and bipartisan backlash from across the political spectrum. Pro-Trump pundits saw the move as naked opportunism, while progressives saw it as hypocritical to meet with an individual they repeatedly warned was similar to Hitler.

On Tuesday, it was reported the visit was motivated by fear of retribution, which cynics may have viewed as a clean-up effort to mute the widespread criticism, but Brzezinski made clear that was very much top of mind in the visit.

“I’ve been surprised at the backlash,” she said. “And the way I look at it is, people are really scared. And it’s one of the reasons we went in there is people are really scared about Donald Trump’s comments that, you know, political adversaries, a lot of people are scared because of what has happened with abortion. These are all issues that are important to me and in some ways personal to me, but definitely personal to the people I really care about.”

She later explained how she ignored past comments from Trump that ostensibly mocked facial bleeding following a facelift, comments which were widely condemned. Listen to the podcast here, and a partial transcript is below.

Coles: So we’re joined now by our best of the week. You know her as the co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC, where her fresh political takes wake you up faster than that first cup of coffee. Mika Brzezinski. Mika [unintelligible] a fierce advocate for women’s empowerment. A bestselling author and the visionary behind the Know Your Value initiative. She’s also a friend of mine and someone I’ve known for many years. We worked together at Cosmo when Mika had a very influential column. And Mika, you normally covered the news, but this week you became the news after your trip to Mar-a-Lago. Tell us about that.

Brzezinski: Well, we we told our viewers about it. I don’t have much to say beyond that, except that in these fraught times, I do think that we are in an environment, no matter how it started, where everyone’s talking at each other, at cameras, on their typewriters. That’s how old I am. I say typewriter, but you know what I mean. Using their keyboards, talking at each other. And I do believe, and this doesn’t just apply to Donald Trump, it applies to anybody in his administration, any Republican, that 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. And I’ve actually been really surprised at the reaction. I’ve heard from a lot of people in my phone, people that I respect a great deal, leaders, people I don’t usually hear from who are really powerful, who just wanted to let me know that that was the right thing to do. And then I have seen, you know, just like the very opposite happening online. Some of it is part of the problem I’m talking about right now. I have heard from reporters by reading about myself and none of them ever called me. That’s the problem. So in part, it is a way of trying to do things differently. And it’s a very serious time. And I take what we did when we did it, how we did it, why we did it very seriously.

Bee:  Actually, I was really surprised also by the blowback. Is it possible because I do personally seek some just kind of like details about what it was like being there. Like what did you do? Did they do the outreach? Did you do the outreach? Like, how did it start? Or when did you even begin considering?

Brzezinkski:  I’d call it a combined effort because a lot of this was on background. I really I hope that we have more conversations. I hope we do an interview. So I want to, you know, stick to the guidelines that we put in place, me, myself for the interview. I talked to a reporter last night. She was very, very upset that I did this meeting. And I said, well, wouldn’t you mean you’re you work for a extremely powerful, credible publication? And she said, ‘Well, I would only go in there if there were certain guardrails put in place. There were certain agreed upon boundaries.’ And I thought to myself, well, how do you know anything about that in terms of I’ve done my best to be as transparent as possible in light of the fact that I had a meeting on background, which this person as a reporter, but know exactly what that’s about. I’ve been surprised at the backlash. And the way I look at it is people are really scared. And it’s one of the reasons we went in there is people are really scared about Donald Trump’s comments that, you know, political adversaries, a lot of people are scared because of what has happened with abortion… These are all issues that are important to me and in some ways personal to me, but definitely personal to the people I really care about.

Bee:  As he’s been so personally toxic, he’s been so personally insulting to you and to Joe Scarborough. Like, what are the guidelines that you set for yourself?

Brzezinkski: Well, I mean, it’s my job to interview and talk to people I disagree with, feel threatened by or who have hurt my feelings in some way. So there’s how I do it. I do my job. I mean, do I really not go in there because he tweeted about me bleeding badly from the facelift at Mar-a-Lago, I don’t know, eight, nine years ago? I mean, we haven’t talked in seven years. And I will say that’s a problem, too. So I’m worried about myself and how I conduct myself in this media universe that we’re in, taking stock of everything that has happened. I don’t regret anything I’ve said during the campaign, and I stand by it. But I’m also looking at how to do things differently. And I would never turn down an opportunity to gain insider information. Never. So how I handle mean tweets or the personal stuff is that that’s just not something I’m supposed to worry about. That’s my job. If I might not get in the way of me doing my job, I don’t think my viewers would appreciate that.

Coles: Mika, to what extent is so much of this also performative because Donald Trump is first and foremost an entertainer. He’s a performer. He knows his audience. I’ve never met him. When you had your conversations with him, it seemed much milder in person. I find it very difficult to know what he’s like because people say he’s very funny. He’s very charming. Clearly, half the country voted for him…

Brzezinkski: So you’ve seen him on our show, Joanna, You have seen Joe hang up on him. We’ve seen big fights and also nice conversations in the very beginning or when he was the host of The Apprentice. And I would say that he’s often very much the same off the air as he is on the air. A lot of different things at once. And that doesn’t change his policies, the things that he wants to do in this next presidency and what he did in his first presidency. And my biggest issue is the overturning of Roe, of course. And so, you know, of course, there were.