NYT (“‘Morning Joe’ Stars Reveal a Mar-a-Lago Reunion With Trump“):
The married MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough drove half an hour from their Florida home on Friday to meet with an old friend turned frenemy turned enemy: President-elect Donald J. Trump.
Their relationship has been complicated. Mr. Trump was once a regular guest on their talk show, “Morning Joe,” and the couple rang in 2017 at a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Then things deteriorated. Mr. Trump called Mr. Scarborough a “psycho” and Ms. Brzezinski “crazy,” claiming that he had once seen her “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” “Morning Joe” became a redoubt of the anti-Trump resistance. This year, the couple repeatedly warned that a second Trump presidency would threaten democracy’s future.
Even for talk show hosts, it turns out, elections have consequences.
“For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, ‘Why wouldn’t we?’” Ms. Brzezinski told viewers on Monday, disclosing the meeting for the first time. “Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”
CNN‘s Brian Stelter (“MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ hosts reveal they met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago ‘to restart communications’“):
The news was so shocking that some “Morning Joe” viewers probably spit out their coffee.
MSNBC co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski “went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally” with President-elect Donald Trump, Brzezinski revealed at the beginning of Monday’s show. The Friday rendezvous was “the first time we have seen him in seven years,” she added.
[…]
The meeting between Trump and the progressive cable network’s hosts — two of the most avowed anti-Trump hosts on television — immediately raised speculation about a détente with the president-elect and sparked criticism from some “Morning Joe” fans.
Veteran media critic Jeff Jarvis, a loyal “Joe” viewer, said on Threads that the meeting was a “betrayal of their colleagues, democracy, and us all. It is a disgusting show of obeisance in advance.” Others on social media vowed not to watch the show anymore, though it is impossible to measure how widespread that sentiment was.
Scarborough and Brzezinski anticipated the criticism and addressed some of it in Monday morning’s announcement.
“Don’t be mistaken. We are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump,” Scarborough said. “We are here to report on him and to hopefully provide you insights” for “understanding these deeply unsettling times.”
RedState (“Megyn Kelly Unleashes the Hounds of Hell on Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough“):
Megyn Kelly offered up a simple three-word response to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visiting Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.
[…]
“I searched for a way to respond appropriately and I called on my 10 years as a litigator, in addition to my now 20 as a journalist, and I think I found the perfect phrase,” Kelly calmly responded. “Go f**k yourselves.”
“G f**ck yourselves, you dishonest jokes of faux journalists,” she added. “What an absurd farce.”
[…]
“How long have they been telling us that he’s (Trump’s) an existential threat, that he’s a Hitleresque figure, that he’s a fascist, that women will die – will die! – if he gets elected?” she seethed. “Well, they’ve done a 180. They’ve done a 180 as their ratings circle the bowl.”
[…]
“They’re grifters,” she said of Scarborough and Brzezinski. “These two, yes, worked day and night to get Trump the nomination back in ’15-’16. They embarrassed themselves and sacrificed any pretense of journalistic ethics in doing it. It was true bootlicking.”
“It is nauseating,” she added. “It’s so stomach-turning. They are so disgusting.”
I was a regular viewer of “Morning Joe” once upon a time, but it has been years. Mostly, my morning routine has just changed, and it’s now rare, indeed, that I turn on a television before 8 pm on a weekday.
While I never thought they were actively working to get Trump elected, Joe and Mika clearly had a personal relationship with him. And they were adamant that those of us dismissing his chances of becoming the 2016 Republican nominee were missing the boat. Eventually, for whatever reason, they soured on him and he, as is his penchant, went after them in the most ugly manner.
That they’ve now gone the way of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, ignoring past humiliations to ingratiate themselves with him, is indeed worthy of ridicule.
If one ignores the personal baggage, though, they have a point. Like it or not—and, I suspect they like it even less than I do—Trump is once again the President-Elect and will once again serve a four-year term as President of the United States. It rather behooves the hosts of a political talk show to have access to him, both to be better-informed commentators and to be able to book him as a guest on their air. It’s not only good for their ratings, it benefits their audience.
Jarvis and Kelly are on both sides of a good point: if one truly believes Trump is a literal fascist and a threat to human rights and the future of American democracy, it is a betrayal of the highest order to kowtow to him.
But what if one merely thinks, as I do, that Trump is morally and temperamentally unfit to the highest office in the world but is nonetheless the legitimate holder of said office? In that case, it seems to me, one in fact normalizes him in the sense of treating him as though he were indeed the President and then holding him to the standards of a normal President.
When he nominates reasonably qualified people to key posts, it seems perfectly reasonable to acknowledge that. In so doing, it makes calling out obviously-unqualified nominees more impactful.
When he proposes perfectly normal policy ideas one happens to disagree with, disagree with them as though they were a normal policy idea proposed by the leader of a legitimate opposition party. And when he opposes policy ideas that violate the Constitution or basic norms of human decency, label them accordingly.
I’ve been rather resolute in defending Republican politicians for aquiescing to the fact that the Republican nominating electorate has repeatedly chosen Trump as the leader of their party. Ditto journalists who treat the Republican frontrunner/nominee/President-Elect/President as though he was those things. The problem comes when they treat truly outrageous behavior as “just politics.”
