MSNBC's "Morning Joe" is about the blow. And its petulant hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, have only themselves to blame.
The eruptions have come in successive days starting on Sunday night after the pair say they were told by management that the show would be preempted, following the assassination attempt on former President Trump on Saturday, for breaking news instead.
The network returned to regular programming Monday with its usual hosts, mostly anchoring from Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. Only "Morning Joe" was conspicuously absent. That set off Joe and Mika when they returned to the airwaves on Tuesday morning.
"Let me just say: Next time we’re told there’s going to be a news feed replacing us, we will be in our chairs," Scarborough declared. "Yeah. And the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else to host the show."
What utter hubris.
The pro-Biden hosts could have spoken to management privately. They could have expressed their disappointment and anger behind closed doors. But Joe and Mika are, and have always been, about promoting themselves first. The only obvious conclusion is that they must have been determined to (a) embarrass their bosses on national television and (b) make themselves the victims in the process.
The network looks like it did not believe that a program quarterbacked by Scarborough and Brzezinski, or its long list of guests and contributors, could be trusted. At this critical moment, following the attempt on Trump's life, it appears the MSNBC leadership team didn't have the confidence that the co-anchors and others could hold themselves in check and speak responsibly. It was too much to risk after the horrific events on Saturday that played out before the entire world.
Truth is, after fawning over Trump to the tune of 41 interviews with him as a candidate in 2015-2016, Joe and Mika turned on him after the show's hard-left audience turned on them. And after Trump topped Hillary Clinton, here's what the conversation sounded like from the married pair after Trump entered office.
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"I think you said something before the show that really kind of like, summed it up. You said… [Trump is] like a kid pooping their pants and then saying, ‘I meant to do that,'" Brzezinski shared in 2017.
"Well, yes. It would be like somebody pooping their pants and then people looking at it and saying ‘oh that’s modern art, don’t you understand. I am making a statement against Russian aggression in Crimea. And so this is my statement, and if you don’t get it then there is something wrong with you, not me,'" Scarborough replied.
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Highbrow stuff. Scarborough, who left the Republican Party the year Trump took office, would go on to charge that a second Trump term would result in the public executions of U.S. generals, journalists and political opponents.
Yes, he really said that... among scores of other crazy predictions.
MSNBC management, including NBCUniversal Chairman Cesar Conde along with MSNBC president Rashida Jones, have done absolutely nothing to stop this kind of rhetoric to this point. This includes from far-left primetime host Joy Reid, who said just days before Trump was shot that if he wins the election, protesters will be "shot in the streets by Trump’s stormtroopers if they protest."
Nah. No inciting there. And Monday night during coverage of the RNC, Reid accused Trump of being "the biggest purveyor and promoter of political violence since George Wallace" before saying she didn't want him to be seen "as a victim."
You know, the guy who nearly lost his life to an assassin’s bullet on Saturday.
Also on Tuesday morning – yes, there's more – Scarborough went off on NBC's most senior anchor, news veteran Lester Holt. Again, if he took issue with Holt's interview of President Biden, which included fair and germane questions, his critique should have been done off the air, not on.
But Scarborough's unchecked ego seemingly can't allow this, so he lectured Holt, who has been a respected journalist and news veteran for decades, on how to properly conduct an interview with Biden while calling him "a phony."
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Referring to Holt’s question to Biden about calling for a "bulls-eye" on Trump, Scarborough said,
"But to ask that question without any context about the politically violent rhetoric that Republicans have been engaged in for close to a decade now… we could talk about Nancy Pelosi, we could talk about the assassinations of joint chiefs, the hangings of Mike Pence, we could go on and on and on. And we could talk about it on both sides. Again, it’s a good question to ask about what he said in a private fundraiser. A good question to ask, I would’ve asked the same question. But to ask that question absent of any context seems to me to be, you talk about a phony moral relativism. It was just screaming throughout that part of the interview. I must say, I was shocked."
That’s textbook insubordination right there. For any company. Criticizing both management and a colleague in such a public way would have gotten many employees fired or at the very least suspended.
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Right there, Conde or Jones should have called down to the control room to tell the hosts to start packing up their offices. But these two are the same execs who allowed everyone from Chuck Todd to Jen Psaki to Rachel Maddow to Joe and Mika to lecture them on the air about the network’s decision to hire former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel.
Pro-Trump voices simply are not allowed on MSNBC air, which was behind the blowback from so-called talent to management. And when push came to shove, it was McDaniel who was shown the door after exactly one interview.
Given the precedent, the prediction here is that nothing happens to "Morning Joe."
Because the inmates appear to be running the asylum at 30 Rock now. Professionalism, responsible rhetoric and reporting be damned.
