'Morning Joe' hosts feared retribution, and bowed to Trump

Obeying the dictator in advance is one of the most cowardly acts of media capitulation we've seen. There will be many more.

Let’s first get something clear as the popular vote counts are being finalized in the presidential election, as California is almost done counting: Donald Trump has dropped below 50% in the popular and has no mandate, much less the laughable landslide MAGA has claimed. It is the weakest popular vote win margin—roughly by 1.6%—in a quarter of a century. It puts Trump in 16th place among post-World War II presidential winners, and his margin ranks at 44 out of 51 since 1824.

The corporate media narrative, however, began almost instantly after the election that Trump had a monumental win, and they’ve yet to correct it. (Democrats, too, complied with it, and it’s time for them to stop this self-defeating ridiculousness and push back hard).

And we see media personalities who criticized Trump kissing his ring—what scholars call anticipatory obedience—and talking about his supposed big win. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the married co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” visited Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to congratulate Trump—after warning on air of Trump’s fascistic impulses for years, and certainly every day during the election campaign—rightly being called hypocrites, cowards and suck ups by both the left and the right.

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People saw through this craven act, and even staffers as MSNBC lashed out, as the the duo’s actions backfired. “Cowardice," one MSNBC employee told Fox News Digital. "Doing exactly what [fascism scholar] Tim Snyder warns on our air not to do: obey in advance. It’s disgusting but frankly unsurprising." Long-time guests are vowing not to return to the program.

Brzezinski laughably claimed the reason they met with Trump is because it was time to “open communication.” But now we’ve learned that they hauled their asses to Mar-a-Lago after seven years of criticizing Trump—having previously been his best buddies—because they feared personal retribution. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported this morning:

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Scarborough and Brzezinski were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration.

Knowing that Trump has threatened retribution against his perceived political opponents and that Trump has promoted lies about Scarborough and Brzezinski in the past, the MSNBC hosts decided to reach out to the president-elect, the sources told CNN.

This is grotesque and the same kind of anticipatory obedience we saw when Jeff Bezos ordered editors of The Washington Post, which he owns, to spike an endorsement of Vice President Harris in the weeks before the election, reportedly fearful of losing Amazon government contracts if Trump won. (Bezos denied that was the reason, simply claiming papers shouldn’t be endorsing in the presidential race.) Stelter goes on:

The two sources generally agreed with Scarborough and Brzezinski’s impression of the situation at hand—namely, that the incoming Trump administration could use its wide-ranging powers to punish people deemed enemies. (Trump ally Elon Musk wrote on X overnight, in a post supporting Matt Gaetz for attorney general, that America needs Gaetz to “put powerful bad actors in prison.”)

Look, I get that people are afraid, including the “Morning Joe” hosts. Beginning in 2017, Trump made vicious attacks on both hosts that went on for four years, mocking Brzezinski’s appearance (“bleeding from a face lift”) and trying to promote a false conspiracy theory that Scarborough murdered his staffer when he served in Congress. And yes, he might go further, even with legal action, as none of us knows what Trump will do.

But Scarborough and Brzezinski are multi-millionaires, enormously privileged people who will be able to protect themselves from Trump much more robustly than the millions of people he will round up and deport or strip of rights every day of his presidency. More than that, standing up to Trump, as the “Morning Joe” duo did as members of the media hosting a daily news and talk program, means you have a responsibility to the public you serve to have the courage of your convictions. It also means telling the truth.

Though they claimed on their program yesterday that they will still speak out about Trump’s terrible actions, do any of us really believe these two will be exposing Trump and vilifying him? Especially now that we know their meeting with Trump wasn’t a journalistic endeavor—wanting to “open communication” with a new president as talk show hosts—but rather a way to try to protect themselves from his wrath and revenge?

Even more cowardly, after their announcement on the show on Monday backfired, Scarborough removed his post about it on Twitter because the replies were blistering, hundreds of comments excoriating the both of them. By removing his post, he removed the replies.

Then, on the show today, he claimed that the responses on social media were “disconnected” with those they received elsewhere.

Yesterday I saw for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world. We were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world, very positive, very supportive.

That seems like nothing but spin and damage control, as they are looking at their tanking ratings probably tanking further. These two may be the most high-profile people in the media to bow to Trump—we’ve seen reporting in general of Trump get very tepid after the election—but they will not be the last.

CNN, MSNBC, and network news ratings plummeted after the elections. Much of the audience before the election came from liberals, while MAGA watched Fox. That audience blames the media, too, for Trump’s win, with coverage that showed a double standard in how Trump and Vice President Harris were covered. “Morning Joe” bowing to Trump and much of the rest of the corporate media ex finger-pointing at Democrats and offering "both sides” coverage isn't going to bring that audience back. Many of us are done with the corporate media.

(And let me say that Joy Reid, Lawrence O’Donnell and the rest of the nighttime line-up at MSNBC is pushing back hard, and I’m thankful to them; it’s the daytime “news” there and the rest of the corporate media we’re done with.)

We’ve been through a Trump administration before. And we learned that the media will not save us. This is further proof that we’re going to beat back Trump again not with the press but with the sheer force of the American people putting pressure on Democrats to stand firm, and by our organizing for the elections ahead.