“Morning Joe” co-anchor Joe Scarborough, after getting slammed by fans for meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, said the intense criticism he received highlighted the “massive disconnect” between social media and “the real world.”
On Monday, the longtime MSNBC personality — and frequent target of Trump’s wrath — touched off a firestorm after he and his wife, co-host Mika Brzezinski, revealed on the show that they visited him and at his Florida compound last Friday in an effort to “restart communications,” as Brzezinksi put it. “We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so,” Scarborough said about the Trump pow-wow.
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The reaction among “Morning Joe” viewers and others was swift — and largely negative. Among those lambasting Scarborough and Brzezinski was media critic Jeff Jarvis, who in a post on X called their meeting with Trump a “betrayal of their colleagues, democracy and us all” and that it was “a disgusting show of obeisance in advance.” On Monday “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin said about the “Morning Joe” duo’s meet-and-greet with Trump that “I don’t think you need to sit down for 90 minutes at Mar-a-Lago and kiss his ring to be able to speak truth and be able to cover a story.”
On Tuesday morning’s “Morning Joe,” Scarborough claimed he received many kudos for the Trump meeting and said the backlash highlighted how disconnected the sentiment on social media platforms like X is from “the real world.”
“Yesterday, I saw for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world because we were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world, all very positive, very supportive, [who said] ‘I understand what you did…’ etcetera, etcetera,” Scarborough said.
Scarborough said that “once in a while I would get a text or call from someone going, ‘Oh, man, I hope you’re doing OK.’ I would call them back. [Author and academic] Eddie Glaude was one of them. I’d go, ‘Are you on Twitter?’ And he goes, ‘I am.’ I’d go, ‘Well, I’m not, so we’ve had a good day. Mika had a wonderful event and it’s fantastic.’”
“All of us will do the best we can do, and we’re all working towards a better America,” Scarborough told viewers, to which Brzezinski added, “Take it day by day, people.” Scarborough prefaced his comments Tuesday by saying, “First of all, thank you to everyone who was so kind last night.”
One of the motivations for Scarborough and Brzezinski’s meeting with Trump was that they were “credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration,” CNN reported, citing anonymous sources. (MSNBC declined to comment on the report.)
The “Morning Joe” duo have been in Trump’s crosshairs many times over the years, with Trump labeling them “Crazy Mika” and “Psycho Joe.” In 2020, Trump posted tweets pushing a debunked conspiracy theory that Scarborough may have murdered an aide who died accidentally in 2001 when Scarborough was a U.S. congressman. Scarborough was not present when the aide hit her head on a desk and died; police ruled her death an accident, per the New York Times.
Before the Nov. 15 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Scarborough and Brzezinski had not spoken with Trump since March 2020, according to Brzezinski said, with the exception of a call Scarborough made to him following the July assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa.
On Monday, Brzezinski said she and Scarborough remain opposed to many of the things Trump has done but that they realized “it’s time to do something different” given that Trump won the 2024 president election and will reoccupy the White House for a second term.
Brzezinski said Trump was “cheerful,” “upbeat” and seemed “interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues.” According to Fox News Digital, Trump said “many things were discussed” during the meeting “and I very much appreciated the fact that they wanted to have open communication. In many ways, it’s too bad that it wasn’t done long ago.”
