Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski mentioned that they met with Donald Trump on Friday, in what they described as an effort to restart communications with the president-elect after years of criticism and warning about his rhetoric and potential return to workplace.
On the opening of Morning Joe, Brzezinski mentioned that, after expressing their need to satisfy with Trump, they got the chance “to just do that” on Friday. It was the primary time they’d seen him in seven years, she mentioned.
Scarborough mentioned, “We talked about quite a lot of points, together with abortion, mass deportations, threats of political retribution towards political opponents and media retailers. We talked about {that a} good bit. It’ll come as no shock to anybody who watches this present, has watched it over the previous 12 months or the previous decade, that we didn’t see eye to eye on quite a lot of points, and we informed him so.”
“What we did agree on is to restart communications,” Brzezinski mentioned, noting that her father Zbigniew Brzezinski, nationwide safety adviser below Jimmy Carter, would converse to world leaders with whom he and america “profoundly disagreed.”
She mentioned they’d not spoken to Trump since March, 2020, aside from a name Scarborough positioned to him on the morning after the try on his life in July.
“On this assembly, Trump was cheerful, he was upbeat, he appeared fascinated by discovering frequent floor with Democrats on a number of the most divisive points,” Brzezinski mentioned. “And for these asking why we might go converse to the president elect throughout such fraught instances, particularly between us, I assume I might ask again, ‘why wouldn’t we?’ 5 years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the nation. We’ve got been as clear as we all know how in expressing deep considerations about President Trump’s actions and phrases within the coarsening of public debate. However for almost 80 million Individuals, election denialism, public trials, January sixth weren’t as necessary as the problems that moved them to ship Donald Trump again to the White Home with their vote. Joe and I spotted it’s time to do one thing completely different, and that begins with not solely speaking about Donald Trump but in addition speaking with him.”
Brzezinski mentioned that they requested for the assembly after listening to “from so many individuals, from political leaders to common residents deeply dismayed by a number of” of Trump’s cupboard choices, and “they’re scared.”
Occasionally, Trump has lashed out on the two hosts, significantly throughout his first time period. In 2020, he unfold a false rumor that Scarborough was one way or the other accountable for the loss of life of a congressional aide when he was serving within the Home. The girl’s widower pleaded with then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take down the then-president’s tweet, however the platform refused.
Their newest assembly was met with harsh criticism from the best and the left. On social media, Trump supporters famous that the Morning Joe hosts had warned of authoritarianism, but met with him anyway. Anti-Trump figures additionally had been harsh over the choice, with former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann posting on X, “Look, this isn’t complicated. Joe Scarborough has all the time been a political whore.”
In the course of the presidential marketing campaign, Trump repeatedly blasted MSNBC proprietor Comcast and mentioned that the corporate ought to be investigated for treason. His rhetoric has raised considerations that company media house owners, anxious to get within the incoming president’s good graces, would cave to his strain techniques. The Washington Submit noticed an exodus of subscribers after it was revealed that its proprietor, vetoed plans for an editorial web page endorsement of Kamala Harris. Throughout his first time period, Trump repeatedly attacked Bezos over the Submit’s protection, threatening to research Amazon over antitrust points.
On Morning Joe, Scarborough mentioned, “We’re not right here to defend or normalize Donald Trump. We’re right here to report on him and to hopefully present you insights which are going to raised equip all of us in understanding these deeply unsettling instances.”
